Old Soul

The most mesmerising, unsettling novel of 2025, perfect for fans of David Mitchell, Julia Armfield, and Margaret Atwood.
'Sinister, mysterious and gorgeously realised' KALIANE BRADLEY, author of The Ministry of Time
'Old Soul will sneak into your dreams and haunt you' CLAIRE FULLER, author of Unsettled Ground
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The woman never goes by the same name.
She never stays in the same place too long.
She never ages. She never dies.
But those around her do.
When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.
Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared.
Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.
And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.
But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?
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'Snags the reader in its claw and mesmerizes from page one' Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch
'Like nothing else I've ever read ... The kind of story you tell around a campfire as the lights of civilization begin to flicker out around you' Kristen Roupenian, author of 'Cat Person'
'Beguiles, terrifies and utterly seduces you ... At once a thriller, a postmodern mystery and an existential horror tale' Megan Abbott, author of El Dorado Drive
'Brilliant, horrifying ... So much fun, fantastically tense and wonderful' Evie Wyld, author of The Echoes
'Clever, spooky ... Kept me guessing to the end' Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists
'A mesmerizing story, brilliantly told' Ian McGuire, author of The North Water
'Smart, taut and twisty ... Deftly delivers the chills' Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

SUSAN BARKER is the author of four books. Her third novel, The Incarnations, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and Notable Book, a Kirkus Reviews' Top Ten Book of the Year and shortlisted for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. An excerpt from her fourth novel, Old Soul, won a Northern Writers' Award for Fiction in 2020. Susan currently lives in Manchester, where she is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.