It was shortly after finishing Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life that I began All Things Cease to Appear. So consumed had I been by Yanagihara’s second novel that I was at a loss for what – if anything – I should read next. Keen for a meaty page-tuner that would reel me in from the start, I thus turned to book blogger extraordinaire – whose reading habit puts mine to shame – Margot from Project Lectito, who was quick to recommend Brundage’s latest thriller.

Set in the fictional rural town of Chosen, All Things Cease to Appear opens with a horrific murder scene when local professor George Clare comes home to find his wife has been brutally murdered. And so starts a compelling crime tale of the finest kind. Interlacing the tragic tale of two families – the Hales and the Clares – both of whom have lived in the same farm house in Chosen – All Things Cease to Appear is a a psychological thriller that hooks its reader with stories that are both haunting and harrowing in equal measure. Brundage possesses a lyrical, crafted style that strongly evokes a sense of place and person and expertly weaves the past and the present with the guilty and the good.

A brilliantly told tale of spousal suppression and sinister goings-on, All Things Cease to Appear is gritty, gothic and ghostly – and a thriller of unbeaten disposition.

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