The Visitor

Rebecca Starford

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Paperback

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English

Allen & Unwin
29 July 2025

'Ghosts live in the sunshine too.'

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.

The Visitor is a compelling exploration of intergenerational trauma, dispossession and the ghosts we can't outrun, from the bestselling author of The Imitator.

'A masterfully wrought study of expatriate hysteria and disorientation. A riveting tale of Australian Gothic in which the fetid heat of subtropical Brisbane and the harsh Antipodean sunlight can be made to seem as sinister as the dark.'

AMANDA LOHREY, author of The Labyrinth and The Conversion

'A suspenseful, atmospheric and deliciously Gothic tale that is genuinely impossible to put down.'

ELIZA HENRY-JONES, author of Salt and Skin

By: Rebecca Starford
Imprint: Allen & Unwin
Country of Publication: Australia
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 153mm,
Weight: 382g
ISBN: 9781761471148
ISBN 10: 1761471147
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 29 July 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Rebecca Starford is the author of Bad Behaviour, a memoir about boarding school and bullying. The book was optioned for television by Matchbox Pictures and aired in Australia on STAN, as well as streamed through more than 20 other countries across the world.  Rebecca's first novel, The Imitator, was published in Australia, and in the United States, Canada, the UK and South Africa under the title An Unlikely Spy.   She is also the co-founder and publishing director of Kill Your Darlings, and has previously worked for Text Publishing and Australian Book Review. Originally from Melbourne, Rebecca currently lives in France.