HAWORTH is a major setting for the latest suspense thriller from novelist Jane E James.

The Crying Boy, which was inspired by real events, features well-known locations including the haunted Old Silent Inn at Stanbury.

Jane, described as an author of dark fiction and psychological thrillers, is a former newspaper reporter who has written several novels.

Jane said Crying Boy portraits became famous in the 1980s when former Sun newspaper editor Kelvin MacKenzie invited people to send theirs in for a mass bonfire.

She said: “My fascination with the cursed painting began when I was a child as my parents owned one of these paintings but it put the fear of God into my mother.”

Kelvin MacKenzie has provided a forward for Jane’s book.

The novel concerns Clayton and Avril Shaw, who have lost their little boy and are still grieving when they move into Swallow’s Nest on the Yorkshire moors.

In their new house Avril discovers a painting and is intrigued by the history surrounding it.

When she learns that the boy in the painting was deaf, like her dead son, she tries to communicate with his ghost.

Is The Crying Boy painting cursed, and can numerous house fires be linked to it?

Struggling with their unstable marriage, the couple find themselves in further danger as an increasingly disturbing bond develops between Avril and the Crying Boy.

Jane set her book in West Yorkshire because her father was a Yorkshireman who took her walks on the local moors during her summer holidays.

She spent much of last summer in the Worth Valley area researching the novel, trying to find an isolated house to become her ‘Swallow’s Nest’ and scouting locations for her story.

Visit janeejames for further information. The Crying Boy is available from Amazon, both in paperback and as a Kindle e-book.