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Hazard Night is the latest novel by author Laura Vaughan. We are so excited to have an extract from this wonderful book to share with you. It’s Laura’s third book for adults. It’s atmospheric, dark and shows some knowledge of traditional boarding school environments which gives the story lots of depth.
From the very first page, the story drips tension and draws you into the world of Cleeve College, leaving you on the edge of your seat.
Cleeve College is not for everyone…
When Eve’s husband is appointed housemaster at his old boarding school, Cleeve College, she gives up her life in London to join him. But the isolation and loss of autonomy threaten both her happiness and her marriage.
The arrival of Fen, an enigmatic artist and wife of the new Classics teacher, is a welcome distraction. Fen doesn’t play by the rules, and she and Eve enter into a game of escalating dares, disrupting the delicate balance of school life.
Then, the morning after Hazard Night, a tradition that allows the students to run wild and play pranks for one day, a body is found. Someone has been murdered. And it seems everyone has something to hide…
The extract below is an Introduction in Eve’s Point of View, describing her and Peter’s arrival at Cleeve College
EVE
The first Arrivals Day, Eve had felt exactly as she was supposed to. She hadn’t had to fake the warmth in her voice or the welcome on her face. Even her nervousness was the kind to be approved of: it showed a proper sense of responsibility. Of course, it was Peter’s day, marking his debut as Wyatt’s housemaster. But, as everyone kept telling her, Eve was to be the power behind Peter’s throne. And she’d found the idea flattering as well as amusing because everything had seemed possible, exactly as it was supposed to on the first day of a new school year.
Arm-in-arm, she and Peter had waited brightly on the steps of Wyatt House, watching as the funeral procession of SUVs slunk up the chestnut avenue. In the car park, each new student stood nervously by the family car as parents unloaded luggage, already looking abandoned despite themselves. This batch of eleven-year-olds were children still, but only just, already lumbered with braces or out-size feet or with legs spindly from a recent growth spurt. Some jittered and fidgeted. Others waited with numb acceptance as if stunned.
The next day, the older boys would return and take possession of the place. The dorm of sixty boys would reverberate with drumming feet and pounding music, whoops and yells echoing in the stairwells. There would be wrestling matches and water fights, the shrilling of the single payphone by the common room. But for now the place held on to the orderly hush of the holidays. The new boys murmured rather than spoke, cowed by the sense of occasion and its limitless scope for embarrassment. The parents kept up a cheerful patter, one or two mothers trying to hide a treacherous welling in their eyes.
You can get a copy of Hazard Night here!
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