Ecton

The Ecton copper mines have been dark since 1889. Then the summer of the great drought drains levels nobody has seen in a century and a half.

Cass Brindley surveys abandoned workings for a living and for love. She keeps strict rules about turnaround times, callouts and never going further than she should, because the one time she arrived too late, a boy died. Below the 200-fathom gate, in a level that isn't on any plan, she finds a wall of miners' chalk tallies, the newest strokes still powdery, and a tallow candle burning on a ledge.

Nobody has worked this level since Lady Day 1788, when twenty-three men and boys were sealed below to finish a quota that could never be met.

Then a local lad goes missing in the hill, and when Cass goes back down, the count has gone up by one.

Now walkers are vanishing from the Manifold Valley. Cass is losing hours. And on the back of her bedroom door, in a neat miner's hand, someone has started counting her.

Ecton is a chilling subterranean horror about debt, guilt and the dark under a postcard-pretty valley. It is for readers who like their scares quiet, close and real.