Cold Hill Books in Order

The Cold Hill books are Peter James in ghost-story mode. They trade the police rooms and forensic detail of Roy Grace for old buildings, family anxiety and the creeping feeling that a house can have plans of its own.

The first book, The House on Cold Hill, begins when Ollie Harcourt, his wife Caro and their daughter Jade leave Brighton and move to Cold Hill House, a huge old Georgian mansion in the Sussex countryside. For Ollie, it looks like a dream: space, history, a place to build his business and a better life for the family. For Caro and Jade, the move is more complicated from the start.

Then the house starts answering back.

At first the signs are easy to explain away: odd sightings, a figure glimpsed on a video call, strange noises, the sense that parts of the building do not quite fit together. Soon the family understands that Cold Hill House has a history nobody fully explained to them, including a room that should not exist and presences that do not intend to stay harmless.

The sequel, The Secret of Cold Hill, picks up after the original house has been destroyed and replaced by a modern development. That should mean a clean break. New homes, new families, fresh glass and steel instead of crumbling old walls. But the land has not forgotten what happened there. The haunting shifts shape rather than disappearing.

What makes the series work is the contrast between the ordinary and the uncanny. James is interested in mortgages, family stress, technology, property dreams and the pressure to believe everything is fine because you have already invested too much to turn back. The ghosts are frightening, but so is the practical trap of being stuck in a home that feels less safe every day.

The books are best read in order. The House on Cold Hill sets up the legend, the family and the rules of the haunting. The Secret of Cold Hill then asks whether a place can remain dangerous even after the original building is gone.

If you like haunted-house stories with a modern Sussex setting, start at the front door and do not skip the first book.