Silent Companions

by Laura Purcell 2 books in this series

The Silent Companions books revolve around The Bridge, the Bainbridge family's isolated country estate, and the painted wooden figures that have accumulated a history of fear around it. The Silent Companions introduces the house through Elsie Bainbridge in 1865 while a seventeenth-century diary reveals an earlier origin for the figures. House of Splinters returns to an earlier Bainbridge generation and shows how inheritance, secrecy and domestic tension further shaped the estate's reputation.

The sequence works in two orders: publication order begins with The Silent Companions, while the internal chronology places House of Splinters first. Both novels use the same house and family history to explore how objects become repositories for stories, how servants and relatives preserve different versions of the past, and how a country estate can turn inheritance into confinement.

Reading order

Books in this series (2 books)

1. House of Splinters

Laura Purcell

First published 2025

4.1(2,950)

Decades before Elsie Bainbridge comes to The Bridge, Belinda Bainbridge moves into the remote family estate with her husband Wilfred and their children. She hopes the inheritance will finally give them security and status, but the neglected house is financially troubled and shadowed by an old…

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2. The Silent Companions

Laura Purcell

First published 2017

3.9(57,460)

In 1865, newly widowed Elsie Bainbridge arrives at The Bridge, her late husband's decaying country estate, to spend her pregnancy away from London. The hostile village and uneasy servants are troubling enough, but a locked room contains a centuries-old diary and a painted wooden figure that…

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