In the night, I slept with my head under a shawl, listening to the ceaseless low groans of the house, telling myself that my mother would never have sent me to live with a murderer or a witch or a Miss Havisham

1924. When Anastasias beloved mother dies, she has no choice but to go to rural Skimpole and move in with the Aunt too fearsome for a first name, an outcast from the village who lives in a dilapidated mansion with two servants and an unruly pack of dogs.

The many mysteries of Skimpole are irresistibly intriguing: how did Anastasias father really die? Who wrote the extremely raunchy love letters she has found in the Aunts bedroom, signed Big Willy? And why does everyone in the village hate the Aunt so much? When some of the Aunts friends from her youth arrive at the house, wreathed in cigarette smoke and an air of debauchery, Anastasia may be closer to finding answers but the truth she was so desperate to uncover will turn her entire world upside down

From the author of The Inverts.