The heir to M.R. James' tradition of quiet, chilly ghost stories, leavened with some of Daphne Du Maurier's keen psychological insight, Susan Hill has spent years tending her small corner of the horror garden. Her 1983 novel, The Woman in Black, is essentially a slim thesis on the return of the repressed, but it has had an enormous impact, spawning a viewer-scarring BBC adaptation in 1989 and a two-person stage play in 1987 that has become one of the longest-running plays in West End history. Reading Susan Hill feels like standing in a dark room and feeling an ice-cold child's hand slip into yours.