Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote

After the death of his mother, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox is summoned to live with a father he has never met in a vast decaying mansion in rural Alabama, its baroque splendour now faded and tarnished, its old slave-bell lain rusting in over-grown gardens. But when he arrives , his father is nowhere to be seen and Joel is greeted instead by his prim, sullen new stepmother Miss Amy and his debauched Cousin Randolph - living like spirits in the fragile decadence of a house full of secrets. 
 
First published in 1948 this, Truman Capote's very first novel, is a story of hallucinatory power, vividly conjuring up the Gothic landscape of the Deep South and a boy's first glimpse into a mysterious adult world. Famously contains the character Idabel, based on the real life To Kill a Mockingbird author Harper Lee, of whom Capote was a childhood friend. 
 
Introduced by John Berend.