When John suffers a sudden heart attack, Marion realizes that she will have to go to basement. She just knows that is where he spends most of his time and she tries to put it out of her mind. Marion knows very little about what goes on down there. The worst thing about John is his secret in the cellar. Though Marion is odd, John is not only strange, he is also creepy and often sadistic toward anyone who crosses him.

In fact, even Marion, who seems to have stopped growing both physically and emotionally around the age of twelve, realizes that if she ever had a visitor, they would think that she and John were hoarders. Once a grand home, the siblings have allowed the house to fall into disrepair. Their family had money once and the siblimgs grew up in the same Georgian townhouse that they still occupy. Marion’s brother John is continuously verbally abusive to her and she seeks solace in a bed full of her teddy bear “friends.” Her older brother lives in the house as well. However, she fails to fit those molds exactly since she doesn’t live alone. Marion Zetland is the kind of middle-age woman that is times past would have been labelled a spinster or even a hermit. If that happens, I will be at the front of the line.Ĭatherine Burns has created two of the most horrifyingly realistic characters I have ever encountered.

In fact, I believe this book should (and probably will) be turned into a movie. THE VISITORS is equal parts thriller and horror. This tale will have readers questioning the lives of their neighbors and possibly their own family members.įreaky, eerie, and terrifying are all appropriate adjectives to describe this realistic psychological thriller. For years, she’s buried the signs of John’s devastating secret deep into the recesses of her mind-until the day John is crippled by a heart attack, and Marion must face what he has kept hidden.įorced to go down to the cellar, Marion discovers more about herself than she ever thought possible.THE VISITORS by author Catherine Burns is creepy with a capital “C.” A timid spinster who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door.and ignoring the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers. Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort.

What becomes of a child who grows up without love? With the smart suspense of Emma Donoghue’s Room and the atmospheric claustrophobia of Grey Gardens, this “bizarrely unsettling, yet compulsively readable” (Iain Reid, internationally bestselling author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things) thriller explores the twisted realities that can lurk beneath even the most serene of surfaces.

Catherine burns the visitors