The Burning Altar

📖 The Scoop

Welcome to the chilling, hair-raising world of Sarah Rayne, the master of British contemporary gothic horror with this standalone modern horror novel – perfect for fans of eerie and skin-crawling reads with supernatural elements!

“Rayne spins eerie yarns within yarns like a latter-day Isak Dinesen or Wilkie Collins” KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Equal parts Daphne du Maurier, Josephine Tey and Ruth Rendell . . . Rayne possesses superb story-telling skills” US MYSTERY GUILD

“Highly enjoyable mainstream horror fare from a genre veteran” BOOKLIST

“Rayne writes with panache and imagination” KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Rayne is a fine writer, a sure-handed plotter and skillful character builder” BOOKLIST

“Colorful characters and a mastery of slow-burning suspense” KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Rayne perfects the craft of deftly chosen details, simmering suspense and chilling surprises” KIRKUS REVIEWS
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Ancient demonic laws, macabre rituals, and a secret the Vatican has striven to hide for nearly two thousand years . . . Danger and supernatural misdeeds await you in this bone-chilling contemporary gothic horror novel.

Patrick Chance was a notorious Victorian rake whose memoirs of his travels through Tibet caused a sensation in the nineteenth century. For he stumbled on a strange, secret tribe who guard the sinister Stone Tablets of their people. A group whose macabre beliefs, blood rituals and horrific customs have torturous, hellish consequences.

But, having retraced his ancestor’s footsteps, Sir Lewis Chance – an eccentric philanthropist – is the only one who knows the truth today. Following in the steps of his forefather, he is the only living being who knows about the ominous machinations in the remote region.

Now the group of dissidents are about to make public something that the Vatican has kept secret for almost two thousand years. Something that will result in a fight for survival as the terrors of the past come to haunt the present . . .

Fans of H. P. LOVECRAFT’s At the Mountains of Madness, SCOTT SMITH’s The Ruins and STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’s Jade Daniels trilogy shouldn’t miss The Burning Altar by Sarah Rayne.

READERS ARE HOOKED ON THE BURNING ALTAR:

“Compelling . . . gripping and terrifying and covering all human emotions” Newcastle upon Tyne Journal

“Fabulous story, great suspense” A. Vallis, 5* Amazon review

“A well-crafted tale which held my interest to the very end – fascinating, absorbing and well characterised . . . I can't believe Sarah Rayne's books aren't more widely known, because they deserve to be!” 5* Amazon review

MORE STUNNING SARAH RAYNE HORROR STANDALONES:
1. Blood Ritual
2. The Devil’s Piper
3. Thorn
4. Changeling
5. Wildwood

Genre: Fiction / Horror (fancy, right?)