The Visitor

Publisher details

Author
Rebecca Starford
Genre
Fiction
Released
29 July, 2025
ISBN
9781761471148

The Visitor

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Synopsis

For most of her adult life, Laura has lived in the UK, her ties to her Brisbane upbringing all but severed. When her parents, Bruce and Eliza, perish in mysterious circumstances in the Queensland outback, she and her family must return to settle their affairs and sell the now-dilapidated house of her childhood.

But as the renovations progress, Laura starts to experience strange happenings in the house that cannot be explained away. Is it haunted? Or is the woman next door, who had inveigled her way into Bruce and Eliza's lives, testing her as she copes with the grief and trauma of their deaths?

Fourteen-year-old Tilly, alarmed by her mother's increasingly erratic behaviour, is drawn into the disturbing atmosphere of the house as the distance between them grows. And with both of them seeing things, Laura realises that unless she unearths what drove her parents to flee the house, they will never be free of the past.

Reviews

Your Preview Verdict: The Visitor by Rebecca Stafford

Review | Preview

29 July 2025

Your Preview Verdict: The Visitor by Rebecca Stafford

    Better Reading Preview: The Visitor by Rebecca Starford

    Review | Preview

    21 April 2025

    Better Reading Preview: The Visitor by Rebecca Starford

      Rebecca Starford
      About the author

      Rebecca Starford

      Rebecca Starford is the co-founder and publishing-director of Kill Your Darlings and an editor at Text Publishing. She has written for Guardian, Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Australian newspapers. She was a founding member of the Stella Prize steering committee. Bad Behaviour is her first book. Rebecca lives in Melbourne.

      Books by Rebecca Starford

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