William

'Best thing I've read this year . . . Just superb. Unsettling in the most beautiful way' Will Dean, author of The Last Passenger 'Probes at the fears for our future and provokes the terrors of our pasts . . . terrifying' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies Henry, a brilliant but reclusive engineer, has achieved the crowning discovery of his career: he's created an artificially intelligent consciousness. He names the half-formed robot William. But there's something strange about William. It's not that his skin feels like balloon rubber and is the colour of curdled milk, nor is it his thick gurgling laugh or the way his tongue curls towards his crooked top teeth. It is the way he looks at Henry's wife, Lily. Henry created William but he is starting to lose control of him. As William's fixation with Lily grows and threatens to bring harm to their house, Henry has no choice but to destroy William. But William isn't gone. Filled with jealousy for humanity, for its capacity to love and create life, William starts to haunt the house. He lurks behind each locked door. You can hear him muttering in the eaves of the attic. He is whispering in Henry's head. And he will be the one to take control . . . William is a new kind of ghost story, where the haunting is not from another world, but from inside your home. Inside your head . . . 'A gauntlet of thrills and surprises' Gus Moreno, author of This Thing Between Us 'From its first page all the way to its jaw-dropping ending, William had me hooked' Nick Cutter, author of The Troop and The Deep