Threading the Labyrinth by Tiffani Angus


Shortlisted for the British Fantasy Awards best novel and best newcomer

Shortlisted for the BSFA Best Novel Award

“A poignant and elegant meditation on time and identity”
– M. R. Carey, author of The Girl With All the Gifts and many more

“absolute garden of delights, full of sensual mystery, strange dreams, and haunting and peculiar magic. A beautiful debut.”
Alison Littlewood, author of The Hidden People and Mistletoe 

“If Robert Macfarlane wrote a ghost story this would be it. Haunting, delicate and multilayered, Angus channels her own humane understanding of our relationship with the quiet places of the world, the places hidden away, neglected, but always eager to blossom with the right kind of attention.”
Helen Marshall, award-winning author of The Migration and Gifts for the One Who Comes After


Toni, the American owner of a failing gallery, is called to England unexpectedly when she inherits a manor house in Hertfordshire from a mysterious lost relative.

What she really needs is something valuable to sell, so she can save her business. But, leaving the New Mexico desert behind, all she finds is a crumbling building, overgrown gardens, and a wealth of historical paperwork that needs cataloguing.

Soon she is immersed in the history of the house, and all the people who tended the grounds over the centuries: the gardens that seem to change in the twilight; the ghost of a fighter plane from World War Two; the figures she sees from the corner of her eye.

A beautiful testament to the power of memory and space, Threading the Labyrinth tells the stories of those who loved this garden across the centuries, and how those lives still touch us today.

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Tiffani Angus has achieved a masterwork of mystery. Angus’ changeling tale, woven throughout, creates the perfect air of supernatural mystery, which is enhanced by her refusal to reveal the truth. We are allowed only hints and second hand, sometimes even third-hand, whisperings. In fact the entire novel thrives on myth, rumour and gossip in the most delightful way.
- British Fantasy Society

An excellent debut novel.
- SF Crows Nest

It's rich and vivid, full of characters who feel rounded and real.
- Simon Guerrier, author Doctor Who, Primeval and Being Human novels

The garden [is] more than beautiful; they delight themselves in the naming of the flowers, of the orchards and the apparitions. Fat bees, the cold hard ground in winter, all the seasons enclosed between its walls, all the times since the garden was born, they whisper to us through Tiffani’s words.
- GeekDad

The story of the decay and subsequent rebirth of a garden, mirrored in the people who care for it. It’s a romance, a fairytale, and a horror story all wrapped into one.
- Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine

An accomplished debut and a storyteller who I will be looking forward to future tales from. A perfect summertime read awaits you!
Runalong the Shelves

Threading The Labyrinth is at once a romance of England and a gorgeously layered story of ghosts through the centuries. It is a remarkable debut novel from an author whose work I look forward to reading more of.
The Furious Consortium

If you enjoyed books like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, or The Golden Key, then there’s a good chance that you’ll like this one too.
- Salon Futura


Paperback ISBN: 978-1-912658-09-1
ePub ISBN: 978-1-912658-10-7
Publication date: 13 July 2020
Format: Paperback, ePub and mobi