Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Animals At Lockwood Manor
    Unavailable
    The Animals At Lockwood Manor
    Unavailable
    The Animals At Lockwood Manor
    Ebook371 pages5 hours

    The Animals At Lockwood Manor

    By Jane Healey

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    A debut novel for fans of Sarah Perry and Kate Morton: when a young woman is tasked with safeguarding a natural history collection as it is spirited out of London during World War II, she discovers her new manor home is a place of secrets and terror instead of protection.

    In August 1939, thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright arrives at Lockwood Manor to oversee a natural history museum collection whose contents have been taken out of London for safekeeping. She is unprepared for the scale of protecting her charges from party guests, wild animals, the elements, the tyrannical Major Lockwood, and Luftwaffe bombs. Most of all, she is unprepared for the beautiful and haunted Lucy Lockwood.

    For Lucy, who has spent much of her life cloistered at Lockwood, suffering from bad nerves, the arrival of the museum brings with it new freedoms. But it also resurfaces memories of her late mother and nightmares in which Lucy roams Lockwood, hunting for something she has lost.

    When the animals appear to move of their own accord and exhibits go missing, Hetty and Lucy begin to wonder what exactly it is that they might need protection from. And as the disasters mount, it is not only Hetty’s future employment that is in danger but her own sanity. There’s something, or someone, in the house. Someone stalking her through its darkened corridors . . .
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 10, 2020
    ISBN9780358105251
    Author

    Jane Healey

    JANE HEALEY studied writing in the MFA program at CUNY Brooklyn College and is the author of the novel The Animals at Lockwood Manor, winner of the HWA Debut Crown Award. Her short fiction has been short-listed for the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Costa Short Story Award, and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She lives in Edinburgh.  

    Related to The Animals At Lockwood Manor

    Related ebooks

    World War II Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Jasmine Throne

      Jun 16, 2021

      The Jasmine Throne
      2 min read

    • Article

      From The Other Side

      Oct 1, 2020

      From The Other Side
      4 min read

    • Article

      Rooted

      May 10, 2019

      Rooted
      9 min read

    • Article

      When Life Bites

      Sep 14, 2020

      When Life Bites
      6 min read

    • Article

      Who’s There?: Every Story Is a Ghost Story

      Aug 18, 2021

      Not all writing is cursed, but surely all of it is haunted. Literature is a catacomb of past readers, past writers, past books. Traces of those who are responsible for creation linger among the words on a page. The post Who’s There?: Every Story Is a

      16 min read

    • Article

      Staying Alive

      Mar 29, 2024

      Staying Alive
      12 min read

    • Article

      A Victorian With Soul

      Apr 2, 2018

      THE WHITE VICTORIAN DOUBLE-STOREY WITH THE VERY GOOD BONES, WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS AND SASH-WINDOW EYES SCREENED BY THE BALCONY WITH FOUR-LEAF-CLOVER TRIM, THIS HOUSE COULD STRETCH TIME. For more than a century its wide Oregon-pine stairway, wooden

      3 min read

    • Article

      Spirited Stories

      Aug 11, 2022

      Spirited Stories
      2 min read

    • Article

      Apparition

      Mar 26, 2020

      Apparition
      8 min read

    • Article

      A GHOST Of A Chance

      Oct 17, 2021

      A GHOST Of A Chance
      2 min read

    • Article

      Wonderful Call Of The Wild

      Nov 26, 2020

      Wonderful Call Of The Wild
      3 min read

    • Article

      My Interiors Life: Weaned On The Small Screen

      Nov 25, 2021

      FOR ME, IT WAS ALL DOWN TO what I saw on the box (which was a lot) — and this extended too to the arenas of action: a fantastic littering of such beautiful and extraordinary interiors, not one of which had I ever set foot in, nor even so much as glim

      9 min read

    • Article

      Freedom: An Ohio Gothic

      May 10, 2019

      Freedom: An Ohio Gothic
      16 min read

    • Article

      Sacred Trash: How to Dismantle a Library

      May 23, 2019

      We yield to our directive. We kill, destroy. We throw out the Jewish canon. The post Sacred Trash: How to Dismantle a Library appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Country-house Clawdo

      Jan 24, 2024

      Country-house Clawdo
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Beyoğlu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra

      Jun 8, 2021

      Selim the half-wit hoarded everything—that was the story they told me my first day in waste management. Selim had lost his wife, and I guess everyone figured he took up hoarding as a way to fill the void. It started out with stuff his wife might have

      24 min read

    • Article

      Remastering The Mythos: Questions For Ruthanna Emrys

      May 4, 2017

      When Ruthanna Emrys first read H.P. Lovecraft's classic tale "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," her sympathies were squarely with the monsters — and that sympathy was the seed of her new book, Winter Tide.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Intimate Quarters

      Jan 29, 2018

      WORDS CLAIRE BISSEKER FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER I HAVE LOVED CABINES, FROM MOSSY GARDEN SHEDS AND GREENHOUSES TO BEACH SHACKS AND VERDANT TREE HOUSES.The closest I’ve come to owning one was the grandly named “summerhouse” I lounged in as a child

      3 min read

    • Article

      Home Bound

      May 18, 2020

      Home Bound
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Garden In The Desert

      Sep 20, 2021

      A Garden In The Desert
      10 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Animals At Lockwood Manor

    3.5/5

    78 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      What can I say about this book? I was lucky enough to receive the ARC and was very enthusiastic about it based on what the description read. I was expecting a ghost-y type gothic tale that would fill me with suspense, and perhaps also involve something going on with the animal exhibits (they come to life? they are haunted?). Sadly, it didn't deliver on any of these expectations, but sometimes it's a lesson to not have expectations and just see where the story takes you. All in all, it's very well written for a debut author and is really a great love story.
    • 3/5
      This book adds history, mystery, romance, and most of all the story that the mammal collection of the British Museum was moved during WWII to the safe location of the vastly haunted, winding, rambling rooms of Lockwood country manor.The description of the book was enthralling, and though it rambled, and was boring in places, it did what I thought it would, in that it brought back memories of the first time I visited the New York City Museum of Natural History. Sitting in a darkened huge circular room, surrounded by stuffed, large animals, frozen in time behind glass dyaramas where the sound of those visiting this room echoed off the large walls in this section of the museum was an experience I never forgot. My adventure to the museum was a fourth grade school trip. I lived in a small town, making this excursion to cause me to become transfixed and very afraid of the vastness of the museum. Some of these mammals I may have seen in a picture book, and so very many of them, I never saw before. Fixed, frozen with their glass eyes seemingly staring at me, this was a very scary experience. Trough the light shining in the glass cases, the darkness of the vast room created an experience I will never forget. I was transported to their environment, and the animals looked so very real, I envisioned them coming alive when no one was there. When I closed my eyes, I imagined a loud, trumpet like blast filling the room. As a side note, this was way before the popular movie A Night at the Museum. The setting of the book occurred during WWII, when much of the mammal collection was transported from the British Museum into a countryside, old, large manor home that was as dusty as some of the mammals. The most precious collections were moved, with their director, Hetty Cartwright to a safer environment during the Blitz. Strange events began to occur, parts of the collection became missing or were moved to various locations in the rambling house. A huge, beautiful Jaguar is the first to be lost. He simply disappeared in the night. Then, other animals were placed in a different setting than originally placed.As Hetty tries to find the animals missing, she is befriended by the sad, depressed daughter of the owner of the manor house. I enjoyed the book, though I can only guardedly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      The premise of this story introduced me to a bit of history I hadn't known: that much of the contents of the British Museum was evacuated to safer locations in the countryside during the Blitz. The "animals" of the title refers to the museum's mammal collection, whose most valuable specimens were relocated to a country estate, Lockwood Manor, along with their director, Hetty Cartwright. The house is huge, maze-like, and rumored to be haunted, and strange things start happening almost immediately as one of the exhibit's, a stuffed jaguar, disappears, and others are moved from their places during the night. Hetty feels out of her element trying to care for her charges, and her only friend is Major Lockwood's daughter, Lucy, who suffers from anxiety and terrible nightmares. This story has a deliciously gothic atmosphere--with echoes of Rebecca and Jane Eyre--as well as a sweet romance and a mystery at the center: Who or what is the menace roaming the halls of Lockwood Manor? Highly enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      I loved this the way I love a Sarah Waters novel. Gothic and tense and SO tightly written, it unfolded so precisely and beautifully. Perfection.
    • 4/5
      At its core, "The Animals at Lockwood Manor" is a feminist and queer love story about a museum curator and an heiress. Its overarching theme is that of the hunter and the hunted, and it becomes apparent quickly that it's not only describing people and animals, but the way men treat women; something to be domineered and kept.

      This is obvious in the way Lucy's father treated her mother when she was alive, and less obvious with how he treats Lucy herself. He acts the concerned father but keeps his daughter as more of a trophy.

      I loved Hetty and Lucy and the slow progression of their relationship.

      Every other character in this book, however, is pretty much irredeemable. Even the character we're meant to sympathize with in the end...I personally could not. Not after everything she did.

      Overall, I really liked The Animals at Lockwood Manor. I was drawn in quickly from the start and I finished it in a couple of days.

      *ARC received from BookishFirst
    • 3/5
      Atmospheric gothic tale of a female musuem curator sent to an English country estate as WWII looms to watch over the mammal collection of her institution. Who and what she encounters there are not what she expected. Healey shows grand potential for storytelling in her debut.
    • 4/5
      You know how sometimes a book just has a hook that appeals to you immediately? That is what happened to me with The Animals at Lockwood Manor. I was straightaway fascinated by the idea of stuffed animals being evacuated from a museum during World War II to what is, in my head at least, something akin to a stately home.For that is what happens when war breaks out and Hetty Cartwright must look after the animals from the museum where she works in London. She also is evacuated to Lockwood Manor with her beloved specimens. This is not a walk in the park for Hetty though. Major Lockwood is an irascible brute of a man, unkind, unpleasant and boorish. I must say that I inwardly cheered every time Hetty managed to stand up to him though. He and his daughter, Lucy, are the only 'above stairs' residents of the Manor since the death of his wife and mother. There is also a selection of servants and guards for the animals, and each character adds to the layers of the story.This is a gothic read with many hidden depths. I really didn't expect a couple of the threads of the story at all. I loved the friendship that developed between Hetty and Lucy, two women of a similar age, both stymied by their families and their backgrounds, both looking for something more in their lives. I also found the descriptions of the animals absolutely enthralling. There are everyday creatures combined with the more exotic and it's quite clear Hetty is a little in love with them all!There's a kind of supernatural aspect to some of the story and those dark corridors and recesses of the Manor provide ample opportunity for sinister happenings, including the mysterious disappearance of some of the animals. Is it ghostly goings on or is some of it down to human malevolence? I thought the author kept up the suspense really well.This is an atmospheric read with the Manor being a character in its own right. It's not a fast-paced read, more one that takes the time to build up the mood. It's dark and unexpected, beautifully written, and I enjoyed it very much.