The ocean at the end of the road

Sussex, England: the middle-aged narrator returns to the region of his childhood for a funeral. He is drawn to a farmhouse at the end of a country lane where, at the age of seven, he meets a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, but as he sits by the pond (which she claimed was the ocean), a flood of pent-up memories overwhelms him.

Forty years ago at this farmhouse at the end of the road, their lodger committed suicide in a stolen car. And his death seemed to ignite a fuse, provoking an unexpected reaction and resonating in unimaginable ways. She unleashed the forces of darkness, something terrifying and unimaginable to a little boy. And the charming and reassuring Lettie, who is surprisingly wise for her age, has promised to protect him no matter what happens...

This riveting, a frightening and elegiac fable, fragile as a butterfly's wing and terrible as a knife in the dark, richly illustrated by the talented Elise Hurst, whose drawings sensitively capture the child's wonder and the poignant sense of danger, that permeate Gaiman's Ocean at the End of the Road.