Alice Thompson's new novel is a Gothic story of book collecting, mutilation and madness. Violet is obsessed with the books of fairy tales her husband acquires, but her growing delusions see her confined in an asylum. As she recovers and is realead a terrifying series of events is unleashed.

William Blake is a private detective in Portobello. When he agrees to investigate the disappearance of Louise, the wife of scientist Dr Adam Verver, he finds himself entangled in layers of deceptions and disappearances that lead him inexorably back to unsolved mysteries in his own past.