Product Description

One of the Best Books of the Year by

Endlessly fascinatingone of the strongest novels of the year. -
Readers will have as much grisly fun just sorting out the facts as they will solving the mysteries. -
A vertiginous gothic masterpiece from the best-selling author of . Charles Pallisers work has been hailed as so compulsively absorbing that reality disappears (). Since his extraordinary debut, , his works have sold over one million copies worldwide. With his new novel, , he returns to the town of Thurchester, which he evoked so hauntingly in . It is winter 1863, and Richard Shenstone, aged seventeen, has been sent downrusticatedfrom Cambridge under a cloud of suspicion. Addicted to opium and tormented by sexual desire, he finds temporary refuge in a dilapidated old mansion on the southern English coast inhabited by his newly impoverished mother and his sister, Effie. Soon, graphic and threatening letters begin to circulate among his neighbors, and Richard finds himself the leading suspect in a series of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from vivisection to murder.Atmospheric, lurid, and brilliantly executed, confirms Pallisers reputation as our leading contemporary Victorian novelist ().