Author(s): Reginald Hill

Crime/Thrillers

A stunning new psychological thriller from the award-winning author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series.

Two strangers arrive in the sleepy village of Illthwaite. Sam Flood is a young Australian post-grad en route to Cambridge. Miguel Madero is a Spanish historian in flight from a priests' seminary. They have nothing in common and no connection, except that they both want to dig up bits of the past that some people would rather keep buried.

Sam is looking for information about her grandmother, who left Illthwaite on the child migrant scheme four decades earlier. The past Mig is interested in is more than four centuries old. When the two meet in the village pub, The Stranger House, they don't take to each other. To Sam, anything that can't be explained by maths isn't worth explaining; Mig sees ghosts; Sam is a fun-loving, experienced young woman; Mig is a 26-year-old virgin. But once their paths cross, they become increasingly entangled as they pursue what at first seem to be separate quests, finding out the hard way who to trust and who to fear in this ancient village whose lines of power run from Illthwaite Hall, home of the Catholic Woollasses.