The Upstairs Room cover art

The Upstairs Room

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

The Upstairs Room

By: Kate Murray-Browne
Narrated by: Imogen Church
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

'The Upstairs Room is the real thing. Frightening and clever and full of atmosphere.' - Susan Hill, author of The Woman In Black

The Upstairs Room is a gripping and unsettling debut from Kate Murray-Browne.

Eleanor, Richard and their two young daughters recently stretched themselves to the limit to buy their dream home, a four-bedroom Victorian townhouse in East London. But the cracks are already starting to show. Eleanor is unnerved by the eerie atmosphere in the house and becomes convinced it is making her ill. Whilst Richard remains preoccupied with Zoe, their mercurial twenty-seven-year-old lodger, Eleanor becomes determined to unravel the mystery of the house’s previous owners – including Emily, whose name is written hundreds of times on the walls of the upstairs room.

 Genre Fiction Ghosts Horror Literary Fiction Supernatural Thriller & Suspense Scary Paranormal Haunted Fiction Suspense

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Into the Uncanny cover art
The House at Phantom Park cover art
Good Rich People cover art
In a Single Moment cover art
What She Lost cover art
Everything and Nothing cover art
The Housemate cover art
The Rival cover art
A Love Story for Bewildered Girls cover art
Watermelon cover art
Amelia Grey's Fireside Dream cover art

Critic reviews

A very impressive debut. The story is played out in an unsettling narrative that makes you want to read on to the end. (Michael Frayn)
An incredible read. Clever, chilling, I couldn't put it down (Joanna Cannon, author of The Trouble With Goats and Sheep)
A gripping and impressive story of mounting terror. Spellbinding (John Carey)
The Upstairs Room is the real thing. Frightening and clever and full of atmosphere (Susan Hill, author of The Woman In Black)
A brilliantly observed and utterly unnerving ghost story of contemporary feminism and the housing crisis. Murray-Browne turns the screws so cleverly that the moment you long to break the novel's breathless grip is also the moment you recognize that its world is actually your own. (Anna Smaill, author of The Chimes)
Kate Murray-Browne’s debut novel is a property horror story ... compulsively readable. Murray-Browne commands a lucid and reasonable prose, just the way to conduct you unprotestingly into the midst of this deranging subject matter. She is sharply observant but never overwrites — and on the few occasions when she offers a plain simile it’s surprisingly funny as a result. Such cool writing looks easy. It’s not. Murray-Browne is an expert editor and it shows ... The Upstairs Room is engrossing. A fine holiday read. Far from London.
Effortless . . . a chilling tale of just how badly wrong life can go when you mortgage yourself to the hilt.
Kate Murray-Browne’s The Upstairs Room has all the ingredients for a perfect thriller. An eerie Victorian house, writing appearing and disappearing on walls, a vanishing child – and knowing all that, it’s one of the few times I’ve begged for an advance copy from the publisher, because I couldn’t wait for it to come out. The story is so immersive, so addictive, it’s the kind of book you continue to read as you are eating, walking around the house, and pretending to hold conversations with other people on the telephone. (Joanna Cannon, author of The Trouble With Goats and Sheep)
All stars
Most relevant

Would you listen to The Upstairs Room again? Why?

No I wouldn't listen again. I have mixed feelings about this book. I was expecting something a little more spooky. I really enjoyed reading about the 'weird' things that were going on, the upstairs room, the writing on the walls, Eleanor's illness, Zoe's sleepwalking - but I don't really feel like we ever got to the bottom of why that was happening?! Was it the house, was there something in the house, was it just coincidence?!

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

I found the narration a bit irritating. I don't feel like the voices portrayed by the narrator fitted the characters.

More psychological than supernatural

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This really isn’t a bad book, it’s written very well. It’s just not what it ‘says on the tin’. It’s not a ghost story, not a thriller, not even really a mystery. It’s a character driven drama. Characters are well defined, realistic and interesting. She’s really managed to capture the nuances of modern life and dissatisfaction with it, which isn’t easy to do. It’s actually quite a pleasant ‘read’. I did feel a tad let down purely because I was hoping for a great creepy thriller of a read as the nights are drawing in, but that’s down to marketing and in no way the writing. I’d definitely read more from the author as there’s nothing wrong with the book. The blurb and synopsis just don’t reflect the novel and I doubt very much these were written by the author herself. The narrator was great too :)

Not a bad book at all.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved this book enjoyed getting to know the characters and liked the ending. Best book I've heard in a while we'll done

Spooky diverse and intriguing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I kept returning to listen to tbis every evening. I suppose I was hooked. thinking about my next opportunity to consume more of this strange tale.

great. kept me listening. kept me thinking.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
this took a bit of getting into but after the first few chapters the characters build well and the story unfolds and keeps you entertained

enjoyable listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews