Benighted

PENGUIN HORROR: A celebration of the very best literary horror, a series of terrifying novels and tales that for generations have thrilled, captivated and kept readers wide awake at night.

A group of travellers find themselves marooned in the Welsh countryside by torrential rains and buffeting winds. Desperate to find shelter from the storm, they flee to a crumbling mansion, where they are reluctantly taken in by the cloistered, erratic Femm family. Strange on first meeting, the secretive family’s true peculiarities only become clear as the night unfolds…

A gothic treat shot through with the dejection and anxiety of a world recovering from the horrors of the First World War, J. B. Priestley’s Benighted is a razor-sharp blend of dark social satire and even darker dread.

‘There are none too many stories comparable with this one’ The New York Times