1919: Sir Edward Horner, the most celebrated artist of his day, destroys his world-famous painting, THE LITTLE BIRDS, shortly before his death. But why?

The new novel by Sunday Times bestseller Harriet Evans is the unputdownable tale of a family torn apart and the house they lived in. Harriet writes the most delicious, epic stories from the heart since Maeve Binchy and Kate Morton.

Millions around the world once queued up to see the painting that captured a perfect moment: Horner’s two children, John and Eliza, playing in the garden of their magical, mysterious Nightingale House, the family home he and his wife created deep in the heart of the English countryside.

But such moments cannot last for ever.

Almost a century later, Horner’s great-granddaughter Juliet inherits Nightingale House, now weighed down with unspoken secrets. Why would Ned Horner destroy The Little Birds - the thing he loved best? And can art historian Juliet untangle the web of passion and tragedy in his life and her own to discover the answer?

Praise for Harriet Evans’s novels:

‘She reels you in and then you’re hooked, right to the last page’ Patricia Scanlan

‘Atmospheric and altogether wonderful’ Lesley Pearse

‘The immense feeling of place, the slow, irresistible sense of being drawn deep into the family and its story, and the strange hovering of menace somewhere in the idyll. Wonderful’ Penny Vincenzi

‘Her characters are finely drawn … The result is that rare and lovely thing, an all-engaging and all-consuming drama’ Daily Mail

‘Wonderful, engrossing … A triumph’ Sophie Kinsella