We are delighted to celebrate the publication of OLD SOUL by Susan Barker in partnership with Centre for Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Susan will be in conversation with Zoe Li, founder of online bookshop Juniper by the Sea.

Doors: 6.30pm, starts: 6.45pm

Tickets are £4.00. Admission is free when purchasing a copy of the book, which is available at a special launch event price of £14.99 on the evening or as part of the advance ticket.

About the book:

When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake’s best friend and Mariko’s twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.

Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko – and then disappeared.

Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko’s revelations. It’s a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died – in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways – and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.

And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.

But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?

“This the kind of story you tell around a campfire as the lights of civilization begin flicker out around you; a global, intelligent, and ambitious archetypal nightmare” – KRISTEN ROUPENIAN, author of Cat Person

“Susan Barker’sOld Soul beguiles, terrifies, and utterly seduces you as swiftly and slyly as the mysterious woman at its center. It’s at once a thriller, a postmodern mystery, and an existential horror tale, but perhaps most deeply it speaks to our current moment: the drift and terrors of loneliness, the risks of intimacy and a piercing nostalgia that never lets us go” – MEGAN ABBOTT, author of El Dorado Drive

About the author:

SUSAN BARKER is the author of four books. Her third novel,The Incarnations, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and Notable Book, a Kirkus Reviews’ Top Ten Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. An excerpt from her fourth novel,Old Soul,won a Northern Writers’ Award for Fiction in 2020. Susan currently lives in Manchester, where she is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

About the host:

ZOE LI is the founder of Juniper by the Sea, an online bookshop and cultural platform dedicated to writers of East and South East Asian heritage, particularly those in the diaspora. Zoe is based in Manchester and the bookshop can be found here: www.juniperbythesea.com

Centre for Gothic Studies:

The event is in partnership with the Centre for Gothic Studies at MMU, which works nationally and internationally to represent and promote the broad field of Gothic and horror studies, from literature, creative writing, culture and heritage, cinema and drama to television, art, architecture, games and media.