It is 1885, a tempestuous - and pivotal - year in Robert Louis Stevenson's writing life. At 'Skerryvore', a Bournemouth villa perched at the edge of a chalky ravine, his wife, Fanny, sets about making 'labyrinthine paths', while Stevenson struggles to reconcile illness, entrapment, marital discord and lack of funds with his drive to write.

The House on the Chine goes behind the façade of Skerryvore to discover what prompts the 'doomed and dazzling' Scottish author to abandon Kidnapped, the 'boys' adventure' he's working on, and create, before the year is out, his chilling psychological thriller Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?

'It is a terrific read, full of haunting images and beautifully paced.'
Elspeth Barker

'Stevenson has surely never been rendered so vividly: Sian Mackay blends a biographer's quest for historical truth with a novelist's insight and imagination to create a work of striking originality. She lures her readers not only into the hearts and minds of Stevenson, his wife and household, but also into his drawing room, kitchen, study and bedroom, through which family intrigue and famous friends and acquaintances flow, including the Americans, Henry James and John Singer Sargent. The result is memorable: a literary portrait of rare intimacy.'
Jim Crumley, author of The Last Wolf in Scotland
About the Author: Sian Mackay was raised in Edinburgh, 'City of Literature', in the same district of Canonmills where Robert Louis Stevenson had been born a century earlier.
After her marriage to an American who was assisting Palestinian refugees living in Cairo and the Nile delta, she lived in Egypt and the USA for six years before returning to Edinburgh to raise her two children.
She began her writing career as Sheila Mackay, a freelance journalist working for publications as diverse as The Glasgow Herald, Times Educational Supplement and World of Interiors.
In the 1980s she founded Moubray House Press in Edinburgh's Royal Mile and went on to write several well-received non-fiction books under the imprints of other publishers.
Whilst living in Spain (1991-2004), her interest in writing fiction kicked in. Encouraged by the publication of short stories, one of which was shortlisted in the Ian St James Awards, she wrote the novel Rafael's Wings (2006) under the pseudonym Sian Mackay, the name she has used ever since. In Mallorca, she wrote for Spanish magazines and began researching the island's historical expatriate community
In recent years, Sian Mackay has been the recipient of two awards from Creative Scotland and a six-week residency at Yaddo, USA. She lives and works in Edinburgh and the Scottish Highlands where she holds writing workshops and acts as a mentor for other writers.