Amy Winston is a hard-drinking, bed-hopping, hot-shot young book editor on a downward spiral. Having made her name and fortune by turning an average thriller writer into a Lee Child, Amy is given the unenviable task of steering literary great Helen Owen back to publication.

When Amy knocks on the door of their beautiful townhouse in West London, Helen and her husband, the novelist Malcolm Taylor, are conducting a silent war of attrition. The townhouse has been paid for with the enormous seven-figure advance Helen has received for the novel she wrote to end fifty years of making ends meet on critical acclaim alone. The novel Malcolm thinks unworthy of her. The novel Helen has yet to deliver. The novel Amy has come to collect.

Amy has never faced a challenge like this one. Helen and Malcolm are brilliant, complicated writers who unsettle Amy into asking questions of herself - questions about what she values. Before she knows it, answering these questions becomes a matter of life and death.

From ultimate book-industry insider John Purcell comes a literary page-turner, a ferocious, fast-paced and ultimately moving novel about ambition, integrity and the redemptive power of great literature.