Old Soul
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Summary
Brought to you by Penguin.
The woman never goes by the same name.
She never stays in the same place too long.
She never ages. She never dies.
But those around her do.
When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.
Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared.
Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.
And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.
But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?
'A mesmerising story, brilliantly told' IAN McGUIRE
'Utterly addictive and completely immersive ...The most propulsive thing I have read all year' LARA WILLIAMS, author of Supper Club
'I was completely swept up ... It continues to haunt and unsettle me, in the very best of ways' EMILY MIDORIKAWA, author of Out of the Shadows
'Like nothing else I've ever read ... The kind of story you tell around a campfire as the lights of civilization begin to flicker out around you; a global, intelligent and ambitious archetypal nightmare' KRISTEN ROUPENIAN, author of Cat Person
© Susan Barker 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
The woman never goes by the same name.
She never stays in the same place too long.
She never ages. She never dies.
But those around her do.
When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.
Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared.
Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.
And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.
But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?
'A mesmerising story, brilliantly told' IAN McGUIRE
'Utterly addictive and completely immersive ...The most propulsive thing I have read all year' LARA WILLIAMS, author of Supper Club
'I was completely swept up ... It continues to haunt and unsettle me, in the very best of ways' EMILY MIDORIKAWA, author of Out of the Shadows
'Like nothing else I've ever read ... The kind of story you tell around a campfire as the lights of civilization begin to flicker out around you; a global, intelligent and ambitious archetypal nightmare' KRISTEN ROUPENIAN, author of Cat Person
© Susan Barker 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025
Reviews
Sinister, mysterious and gorgeously realised, Old Soul is as good on the horror and subliminity of love (and its shadow, loneliness) as it is on nerve-flaying visions of the vicious supernatural
KALIANE BRADLEY, author of The Ministry of Time