A sinister tale about Barnaby Gaunt, who, recently orphaned, goes to stay with his uncle on a picturesque island off the Canadian coast, only discover his uncle has plans to kill him. O’Grady’s third novel was her best received and bestselling, and was adapted into the popular 1966 film by horror director William Castle. Dust jacket illustrated by the appropriately unusual Edward Gorey.

O’Grady is a Vancouver-born writer of some obscurity. She wrote three books while raising three children, a fact that was made hay of on her books’ jackets which positioned her as a harried housewife. A 2009 essay for The Believer magazine by Theo Schell-Lambert brought significant attention to her for the first time in decades, as it recounted his experience as a student learning about Let’s Kill Uncle from an obsessed teacher who recited passages to new students annually.

The novel’s cult aura is easily understood by its deftly-executed and subversive narrative and happy embrace of the macabre, but although it has been reissued and has found fans in many a book critic and discerning reader, Donna Tartt, and Morrissey, who named an album after the film, it is remains significantly under-appreciation, and ready to increase its fan base.

London: Longman’s, Green and Co, 1964. First UK edition. 246 pages. 20.5 x 14 x 2.5. Hardback. Very good in very good dust jacket with slight discolouration and scuffs at edges.