From the highly acclaimed writer of THE BIRTH OF VENUS comes a breakthrough psychological thriller where the means of survival are just as shocking as surrender.

'Dunant triumphs, like all good novelists: in a deft, shrewd, precise use of killer detail' CHRISTOBEL KENT, GUARDIAN

'She writes like a painter, and thinks like a philosopher . . . A tour de force of storytelling' AMANDA FOREMAN

'A writer of powerful historical imagination and wicked literary gifts' SIMON SCHAMA

Terrifying, dark and bold, Sarah Dunant's breakthrough psychological thriller transcends genres and audiences; it crosses all boundaries, encroaching on the darker side of sex and fantasy, male and female.

Elizabeth Skorvecky has just come out of a long-term relationship with her boyfriend. Alone in her Victorian house, her only companions are her cat, a trashy crime novel she's translating from Czech, and her music. As the summer ends and the days draw in, unsettling things begin to happen. First it's just a missing CD, then music playing in an empty kitchen at midnight, then a table laid for breakfast for two. Poltergeist? Insanity?

When Elizabeth wakes at four in the morning to find a man sitting at the end of her bed, she knows, sickeningly , she's very sane - and being stalked. She also discovers that the means of surviving can be just as shocking as surrender.