Shani Struthers

ALLi Author Member

Location: United Kingdom (the)

Genres: Thriller, Mystery, Horror

Skills: Press/Media Interview, Reading/Literary Event, Self-publishing Workshop/Training, Writing Workshop

Born in Brighton, UK, and still living there, Shani Struthers is the author of twenty-five supernatural thrillers (so far), some set in various locations in England, others in more far-flung destinations such as Venice and America. Having been brought up with an understanding of the Occult and alternative views on religion, she threads this knowledge throughout her books, often drawing on real-life experiences of her own, from people she has known and from well-known Occult figures too. Please Note: her books tend to revolve more around PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR. You won't find gore, vampires, werewolves, zombies or the like in her fiction. Her various paranormal series have proved very popular indeed, including the Psychic Surveys Series, This Haunted World, Reach for the Dead and Jessamine. She has also written a set of Psychic Surveys Companion Novels and three Christmas Ghost stories: Eve, Carfax House and The Damned Season, as well as a psychological thriller, Summer of Grace.

Shani Struthers' books

Psychic Surveys Book One: The Haunting of Highdown Hall

If you sell your soul to the devil, can you ever get it back?

The latest in a long line of psychically gifted females, Ruby Davis, can see through the veil that separates this world and the next, helping grounded souls to move towards the light - or 'home' as Ruby calls it. Not just a job for Ruby, it's a crusade and one she wants to bring to the High Street. Psychic Surveys is born.

Based in Lewes, East Sussex, Ruby and her team of freelance psychics have never been busier. Specialising in domestic cases, their solid reputation is spreading - it's not just the dead that can rest in peace but the living too. All is threatened when Ruby receives a call from the irate new owner of Highdown Hall. Film star, Cynthia Hart, is still in residence, despite having died in 1958.

Winter deepens and so does the mystery surrounding Cynthia, who insists the devil is blocking her path to the light. Investigating her apparently unblemished background, Ruby is pulled further and further into Cynthia's world and the darkness that now inhabits it. For the first time in her career, Ruby's deepest beliefs are challenged.

Does evil truly exist? And if so, is it the most relentless force of all?

Psychic Surveys Book Two: Rise to Me

Eighteen years ago, when psychic Ruby Davis was a child, her mother - also a psychic - suffered a nervous breakdown. Ruby was never told why. "It won't help you to know," the only answer ever given. Fast forward to the present and Ruby is earning a living from her gift, running a high street consultancy - Psychic Surveys - specialising in domestic spiritual clearance.

Boasting a strong track record, business is booming. Dealing with spirits has become routine but there is more to the paranormal than even Ruby can imagine. Someone - something - stalks her, terrifying but also strangely familiar. Hiding in the shadows, it is fast becoming bolder and the only way to fight it is for the past to be revealed - no matter what the danger.

When you can see the light, you can see the darkness too.

And sometimes the darkness can see you.

Psychic Surveys Book Three: 44 Gilmore Street

Psychic Surveys - specialists in domestic spiritual clearance - have never been busier. Although exhausted, Ruby is pleased. Her track record as well as her down-to-earth, no-nonsense approach inspires faith in the haunted, who willingly call on her high street consultancy when the supernatural takes hold.

But that's all about to change.

Two cases prove trying: 44 Gilmore Street, home to a particularly violent spirit, and the reincarnation case of Elisha Grey. When Gilmore Street attracts press attention, matters quickly deteriorate. Dubbed the 'New Enfield', the 'Ghost of Gilmore Street' inflames public imagination, but as Ruby and the team fail repeatedly to evict the entity, faith in them wavers.

Dealing with negative press, the strangeness surrounding Elisha, and a spirit that's becoming increasingly territorial, Ruby's at breaking point. So much is pushing her towards the abyss, not least her own past. It seems some demons just won't let go...

Psychic Surveys Book Four: Old Cross Cottage

In a quiet Dorset Village, Old Cross Cottage has stood for centuries, overlooking the place where four roads meet. Marred by tragedy, it's had a series of residents, none of whom have stayed for long. Pink and pretty, with a thatched roof, it should be an ideal retreat, but as new owners Rachel and Mark Bell discover, it's anything but.

Ruby Davis hasn't quite told her partner the truth. She's promised Cash a holiday in the country but she's also promised the Bells that she'll investigate the unrest that haunts this ancient dwelling. Hoping to combine work and pleasure, she soon realises this is a far more complex case than she had ever imagined.

As events take a sinister turn, lives are in jeopardy. If the terrible secrets of Old Cross Cottage are ever to be unearthed, an entire village must dig up its past.

Psychic Surveys Book Five: Descension

Brookbridge housing estate has long been a source of work for Psychic Surveys. Formerly the site of a notorious mental hospital, Ruby and her team have had to deal with spirits manifesting in people's homes, still trapped in the cold grey walls of the asylum they once inhabited. There've been plenty of traumatic cases but never a mass case - until now.

The last remaining hospital block is due to be pulled down, a building teeming with spirits of the most resistant kind, the institutionalised. With the help of a newfound friend, as well as Cash and her colleagues, Ruby attempts to tackle this mammoth task. At the same time her private life is demanding attention, unravelling in ways she could never imagine.

About to delve deep into madness, will she ever find her way back?

Psychic Surveys Book Six: Legion

Along a sheltered lane, deep in the Sussex countryside, sits a house that is sometimes called home, the tenants it has held unable to forget it. When Ruby Davis gets a distressed call from Rosie Cowell, the latest inhabitant, little does she know that her life too will change forever, from the moment she steps over the threshold.

Unlike other houses of its kind, such as Bolskine and Borley, Blakemort has no reputation. Indeed, there is no written record of it anywhere; its history is quite untraceable. But Blakemort exists, and it exists for one purpose only. To torment.

How do you fight a house like Blakemort? Even with a team on your side, and the light encircling you? Is it possible to take on a darkness this deep?

In Legion, Blakemort is back.

Did it ever truly go away?

Psychic Surveys Book Seven: Promises to Keep

Heavily pregnant, Ruby Davis has handed over the reins of her psychic business to Corinna, Theo and Ness, who all lament the loss of her leadership. Corinna, at the helm, is determined to keep up their brilliant track record, with case after case continuing to come in. But something has caught her attention. Not a case, exactly, but a dark local mystery.

Rayners Wood forms part of a local landscape feature known as the Devil's Triangle, with Chanctonbury Ring and Cissbury Ring being the other points of the formation, and all associated with cults and black magic.

Called to the Bows' home in Lindfield, where the family is experiencing psychic phenomena, Corinna senses a link between the woods and another house in the village, one that the spirit at the Bows' house is trying to warn them about - Low Cottage. Further investigations reveal that certain houses in Lindfield form a triangle of their own, with Low Cottage and Rayners Wood being the bottom points of each formation, indicating something hellish.

Corinna has been warned by Ruby to keep their work as ordinary as possible after Blakemort, to keep the original purpose of the business: to specialise in spiritual domestic clearance and nothing more. But with Psychic Surveys, very often the ordinary leads to the extraordinary, and as more links are forged between Low Cottage and Rayners Wood, mortal danger awaits...

Psychic Surveys Book Eight: The Weight of the Soul

Life may have moved on to new challenges for Ruby Davis, now being a mother to baby Hendrix, but she's back at the helm of Psychic Surveys, her spiritual domestic clearance company, and the cases just keep getting stranger.

A new client, Carrie-Ann Kendall, has suffered an accident at sea, one that - according to her - she shouldn't have survived. Visiting a clairvoyant who is apparently terrified by her presence, only confirms this notion. It is now up to Ruby and the team to find out whether she has cheated death. If so, what are the consequences, and for how long?

Leon Vasilescu is the clairvoyant, now missing since encountering Carrie-Ann, and whom Psychic Surveys must track down. But in doing so, they will encounter another danger, one that is far more personal to Ruby and her mother Jessica, that could have them facing death too.

Psychic Surveys Book Nine: The Devil's Liar

As a young woman, Theo was confronted by the spirit of a child who had killed other children, but decided she could be of no help, shutting down all possibility of further communication. Now older and wiser, Theo comes to regret that decision and wants to make amends, involving the Psychic Surveys team in her quest.

Meanwhile, Ruby is dealing with Willow Bayliss, a child who appears to be a channel for an energy that can only be described as base. Effortlessly she opens doors to paranormal experiences beyond even Ruby’s experience.

Via Willow and the child spirit, Ruby and Theo are plunged into the very depths of themselves, having to examine first their own fears and motives before they can help either. They will learn there are some devils worse than others. Devils that lie and manipulate the truth and yet, for Ruby at least, are so easy to believe…

A Psychic Surveys Companion Novella: Blakemort

After her parents' divorce, five-year old Corinna Greer moves into Blakemort with her mother and brother. Set on the edge of the village of Whitesmith, the only thing attractive about it is the rent. A 'sensitive', Corinna is aware from the start that something is wrong with the house. Very wrong.

Christmas is coming but at Blakemort that's not something to get excited about. A house that sits and broods, that calculates and considers, it's then that it lashes out - the attacks endured over five years becoming worse. There are also the spirits, some willing residents, others not. Amongst them a boy, a beautiful, spiteful boy...

Who are they? What do they want? And is Corinna right when she suspects it's not just the dead the house traps but the living too?

A Psychic Surveys Companion Novella: Thirteen

In 1977, Minch Point Lighthouse on Skye's most westerly tip was suddenly abandoned by the keeper and his family - no reason ever found. In the decade that followed, it became a haunt for teenagers on the hunt for thrills. Playing Thirteen Ghost Stories, they'd light thirteen candles, blowing one out after every story told until only the darkness remained.

In 1987, following her success working on a case with Sussex Police, twenty-five year old psychic, Ness Patterson, is asked to investigate recent happenings at the lighthouse. Local teen, Ally Dunn, has suffered a breakdown following time spent there and is refusing to speak to anyone. Arriving at her destination on a stormy night, Ness gets a terrifying insight into what the girl experienced.

The case growing ever more sinister, Ness realises: some games should never be played.

A Psychic Surveys Companion Novella: Rosamund

Ruby Davis runs Psychic Surveys, a high street company specialising in domestic spiritual clearance. Having inherited her ability to see beyond the veil that separates this world and the next from her mother, Jessica, she is busy helping grounded spirits to cross the great divide. In turn, Jessica inherited her gift from her mother, Sarah, and Sarah from Rosamund.

Throughout the early twentieth century, Rosamund Davis was a woman held in high regard concerning her mediumship abilities and her pioneering work with London's famous psychical society. She published many papers on psychic matters, although there are some that remain unpublished, for the eyes of the Davis family only. It is these unavailable works concerning the non-spirit that fascinate many - entities born of negative thoughts that subsequently take on their own energy. Entities known as demons.

But what caused her to write about such dark matter?

From her own notes, in her own words, this is Rosamund's account.

A Psychic Surveys Prequel: Eve

In 1899, in the North Yorkshire market town of Thorpe Morton, a tragedy occurred; 59 people died at the market hall whilst celebrating Christmas Eve, many of them children. One hundred years on and the spirits of the deceased are restless still, 'haunting' the community, refusing to let them forget.

In 1999, psychic investigators Theo Lawson and Ness Patterson are called in to help, sensing immediately on arrival how weighed down the town is. Quickly they discover there's no safe haven. The past taints everything.

Hurtling towards the anniversary as well as a new millennium, their aim is to move the spirits on, to cleanse the atmosphere so everyone - the living and the dead - can start again. But the spirits prove resistant and soon Theo and Ness are caught up in battle, fighting against something that knows their deepest fears and can twist them in the most dangerous of ways.

They'll need all their courage to succeed and the help of a little girl too - a spirit who didn't die at the hall, who shouldn't even be there...

Summer of Grace

1999: In the small town of Rutherford, Kansas, four teenagers work the night shift in a local store for the summer. Three are loners. One is new in town. Together they're a perfect fit.

2010: Tupper, the owner of the store and a pillar of the community, dies. Of the night shift, only three return to their hometown for his funeral.

Jules, Lenny and Dean haven't heard a word from Grace since they left for college in the fall of 1999, despite promises to keep in touch.

No one in town remembers her either.

Or so they say.

Jules delves deeper into the mystery of her missing friend, becoming obsessed by it.

Obsession, though, can be a very dangerous thing...

Carfax House

A renovation. In the countryside. Just over an hour's train ride from London.

An ideal family home. Sold unseen. At auction.

Married couple, Al and Liz Greenaway, love London, but when they discover an impressive country property for sale, in need of some TLC, for the same price as their London flat, they decide to go for it. For them, life is all about reinventing themselves, keeping things fresh, and this house marks an exciting new chapter.

In the week running up to Christmas, it is Liz who finds herself at Carfax House, alone. Al's held up with work. No matter, there's plenty to occupy her before he arrives, getting it ready for the festive season. A fine house. Once. Solitary, romantic, isolated, and quiet. So quiet that, for the first time in years, Liz can hear her own thoughts as long buried memories emerge. And there's an echo in them, a whisper...

For someone else in the house, memories are emerging too.

Carfax House - what if it's haunted?

The Damned Season

On a strange island, amongst strangers, a strange tale unfolds...

Beth Williams leads a lonely existence, going to work, then returning to her flat to watch TV, eat and sleep - the same routine on repeat, day after day. It's a loneliness she nurtures, finds comfort in even, except at Christmas, a time of dread.

Then comes an invite, an offer from an old friend, to join him for 'The Damned Season' at his house on an island off the coast of Anglesey, for Christmas with a difference. Intrigued as well as desperate, Beth accepts, arriving there a few days before Christmas Eve.

She's not the only one invited, however, there are four others, all strangers to each other, all crossing murky, choppy waters to meet their host, a much changed man that seems not only surprised to see them, but dismayed, and weary too. Who is nothing but a husk.

With the boatman gone and the mists closing in, Beth finds herself in a solitary house of ever-changing rooms and never-ending corridors, of people disappearing and then reappearing, of feasts and famine. And then there are the doors, constantly multiplying, and locked...aren't they?

The Damned Season. It's coming.

Reach for the Dead Book One: Mandy

There is a doll... There is a legend...

When museum curator Annie Hawkins walks into a diner in Idaho Falls, seeking the help of twenty-two-year-old Shady Groves with an old broken doll named Mandy, life takes a dramatic turn for both of them. Psychometry is the ability to sense or read the history of an object just by touching it, and Annie has heard Shady has this psychic ability.

Mandy may look harmless, but Annie believes she's possessed and, after handling her, Shady can only agree. She feels tainted by the doll that now invades her thoughts and dreams, terrifying her. There's only one solution: to understand the doll, her history, what has possessed her, and why. Knowledge is power, Annie tells Shady. It's protection.

The pair set off on a road trip--along with Shady's old high school friend Ray--one that will take them from Idaho into the depths of Canada, desperate to trace Mandy's past, to find out something, anything, about the demonic doll that accompanies them in the trunk of the car.

The truth, when it comes, is far deadlier than any of them could have realized...

Reach for the Dead Book Two: Cades Home Farm

When you look in the mirror, who do you see?

With Mandy the haunted doll now safely ensconced in Mason Town Museum, sealed in a glass case, Shady Groves and her colleagues, Annie and Ray, can relax. After a fashion. The small-town museum they run is not like others, it's a place that seeks to contain and understand artifacts and relics charged with negative energy. Their aim is to gradually reduce how potent that energy can be, and the destruction it can lead to.

All is well, until Shady chances upon a mirror in a thrift store. The reflection staring back at her is not quite her own. The artifact is purchased and brought back to the museum, where, under controlled circumstances, they begin to explore its history.

A girl, a woman, appears to be the previous owner. One who is troubled, who swings between emotions like some wild pendulum. As more is revealed, Shady follows her down each dark avenue, finally uncovering an involvement in one of the most shocking episodes of American history. Appalled, she refuses to continue.

But, as Shady, Annie and Ray know, sometimes there's no turning back.

Just what did happen at Cades Home Farm?

Reach for the Dead Book Three: Walker

Before the myth, there was the truth.

On a road trip to Baker City and the mountains of Oregon, Shady Groves, Ray Bartlett and their friends are looking forward to a few days' vacation. On the way, they make an unscheduled motel stop where Shady encounters Missy Davenport, the proprietor, an old photograph of Missy too, and her family, horror attached to it.

Arriving in Baker City, they stay at the Grand Willmott before heading into the wilderness, another photograph down a gloomy corridor there, this time of ten men in animal masks, armed with pitchforks, so at odds with the hotel's luxury surroundings.

Two photographs in less than 24-hours, both of which unsettle her.
But is that the only connection?

Piece by piece, Shady will find there's more to the photographs than she could ever imagine. And that creatures of myth and legend, hybrids, could be responsible for a spate of missing people, including Brandi Hadley, the most recent person from Baker City and the local area to disappear without trace.

This Haunted World Book One: The Venetian

'Welcome to the asylum...'

2015
Their troubled past behind them, married couple, Rob and Louise, visit Venice for the first time together, looking forward to a relaxing weekend. Not just a romantic destination, it's also the 'most haunted city in the world' and soon, Louise finds herself the focus of an entity she can't quite get to grips with - a 'veiled lady' who stalks her.

1938
After marrying young Venetian doctor, Enrico Sanuto, Charlotte moves from England to Venice, full of hope for the future. Home though is not in the city; it's on Poveglia, in the Venetian lagoon, where she is set to work in an asylum, tending to those that society shuns. As the true horror of her surroundings reveals itself, hope turns to dust.

From the labyrinthine alleys of Venice to the twisting, turning corridors of Poveglia, their fates intertwine. Vengeance only waits for so long...

This Haunted World Book Two: The Eleventh Floor

A snowstorm, a highway, a lonely hotel...

Devastated by the deaths of her parents and disillusioned with life, Caroline Daynes is in America trying to connect with their memory. Travelling to her mother's hometown of Williamsfield in Pennsylvania, she is caught in a snowstorm and forced to stop at The Egress hotel - somewhere she'd planned to visit as her parents honeymooned there.

From the moment she sets foot inside the lobby and meets the surly receptionist, she realises this is a hotel like no other. Charming and unique, it seems lost in time with a whole cast of compelling characters sheltering behind closed doors.

As the storm deepens, so does the mystery of The Egress. Who are these people she's stranded with, what secrets do they hide? And, in a situation that's becoming increasingly nightmarish, is it possible to find solace?

This Haunted World Book Three: Highgate

What if the end was just the beginning?

Lucy Klein, 42, is not only obsessed with Highgate, she works there too, organising tours for those with an interest in some of the finest Victorian funerary architecture in existence. Single, and on the shy side, she is nonetheless content with her life, or so she thinks. When she meets the enigmatic Zak Harborne, she realises what she's been missing and quickly falls in love. Suddenly, it is the business of living that interests her.

1972, and Emma Matthews, a 19-year-old history student, also feels as though she's on the outside. After visiting a derelict Highgate with a group of friends, she starts to feel a connection, a sense of meaning to her life, in amongst the tombstones, the crosses and the angels. Returning to Highgate over and over, she discovers both a paradise and a garden decidedly more savage.

Grace Derby is just 11 when she encounters the gentleman, tall and with a tall hat, a long black coat and a cape about his shoulders. It is the 1850s and street urchins such as her are not accustomed to kindness from those belonging to the upper echelons. Proffering money for food, for her and her family, he asks nothing in return. Curious about the man with the kind blue eyes, she follows him one day... all the way to Highgate.


For some, it seems, all roads lead to Highgate...

This Haunted World Book Four: Rohaise

Two women, centuries apart, united by one thing: obsession.

Kenna Jackson is stressed. London is sucking the life out of her and there's no way to escape the rat race. Or is there? When an opportunity presents itself out of the blue, she decides to take it. After all, it's change she craves.

Drumlin Castle has stood for ten centuries and no doubt will stand for ten more. Set in the heart of the Aberdeenshire countryside, it's witnessed the best of life...and the worst.

Not much is known of Rohaise, who once lived there, only that she was a fiery redhead, the mistress of the Laird, and that she lost her life defending both him and the castle.

As Kenna settles into her new role as Drumlin's manager, she becomes more and more intrigued with Rohaise, determined to flesh out this mysterious figure from a bygone age.

The past, though, as she's about to learn, can be hell.

Jessamine (Jessamine Book One)

"The dead of night, Jess, I wish they'd leave me alone."

Jessamin Wade's husband is dead - a death she feels wholly responsible for. As a way of coping with her grief, she keeps him 'alive' in her imagination - talking to him every day, laughing with him, remembering the good times they had together. She thinks she will 'hear' him better if she goes somewhere quieter, away from the hustle and bustle of her hometown, Brighton. Her destination is Glenelk in the Highlands of Scotland, a region her grandfather hailed from and the subject of a much-loved painting from childhood.

Arriving in the village late at night, it is a bleak and forbidding place. However, the house she is renting - Skye Croft - is warm and welcoming. Quickly she meets the locals. Her landlord, Fionnlagh Maccaillin, is an ex-army man with obvious and not so obvious injuries. Maggie, who runs the village shop, is also an enigma, startling her with her strange 'insights'. But it is Stan she instantly connects with. Maccaillin's grandfather and a frail, old man, he is grief-stricken from the recent loss of his beloved Beth.

All four are caught in the past. All four are unable to let go. Their lives entwining in mysterious ways, will they always belong to the ghosts that haunt them?

Comraich (Jessamine Book Two)

An extreme land breeds extreme emotions.

Comraich - Gaelic for Sanctuary - that's what this ancient fortress of a house in the Highlands of Scotland has offered its generations, a haven from the world beyond.

The nesting instinct kicking in, a pregnant Jessamin decides that Comraich, which she shares with her partner Fionnlagh Maccaillin, needs refreshing. Getting to work in one of the spare bedrooms she makes a startling discovery, one that pulls her into a world of the intense and disturbing passions of others that have been here before.

Jessamin has to decide.

Will delving deeper into Comraich's history bring hope and peace to this troubled house or return her to a darkness she's only recently left behind?

Wildacre - A Christmas Ghost Story

Home is where the heart is: a place where memories are forged, a refuge from the world. But what if those memories are painful? And the refuge becomes a prison?

Jessica Lockhart is in need of a live-in carer over the Christmas period; Isla Barrow is the woman who takes the job. After a fraught journey to reach her along remote country lanes, Isla arrives to find the old woman in distress, and the house strangely unnerving.

With the weather hostile, no phone line or mobile signal, and her charge growing increasingly frail, Isla realises death is waiting. And something else besides: vengeance.

Jessica is clearly a woman with secrets, but then so too is Isla. Together they must work out a plan of redemption before what stalks Wildacre destroys them both.

Christmas, a time of joy and wonder.

The darkest time of year.

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