Ash Harrier: The Eerie Excavation (Pantera Press 2023)
The second volume of one of my favorite Australian series.
Alice England lives with her father, who runs a funeral home. Alice was teased because of this at school, but she still managed to make friends. Both Violet and Cal are eccentric, but in their own ways: Violet is allergic to sunlight and Cal is a really naughty student. Death is almost natural for Alice, because she lived her whole life among funerals, and her own twin was a stillborn. The girl somehow has a special relationship with the personal belongings of the deceased and helps her get to know them better. One of her favorite habits is to imagine what kind of coffin would suit a person. From these details alone, it is clear that this is an unusual and unique story.
Alice persuades her friends to participate in an archaeological camp during the summer holidays to search for traces of witchcraft in the creepy Pendle Woods. The situation is also complicated by the fact that there is a centuries-old conflict between the two families that own the forest. Are the families cursed? The story borders on the supernatural, but we often realize that everything has a logical explanation.
Ash Harrier lives in Western Australia, where she is an ambassador for a charity that helps disadvantaged children create their own home library. She is obsessed with puzzles, scientific facts, birds and the smell of tea, her favorite pastimes are reading, daydreaming and spending time in the garden. The idea for her first novel came to her when she was waiting for her daughter in front of school and saw a red-haired girl walking alone. She became Alice. Three volumes of the series have already been published in Australia and the first book was published in Europe this year.
