‘By the end of the third page I was not only hooked, but beginning to think that this might be the best book I’d read all year.’ Joanne Harris

‘I wanted someone to know, you see. To know my truth, now that I am gone. How everything and none of it happened.’

Everyone knew bestselling novelist Cassandra Tipp had twice got away with murder.

Even her family were convinced of her guilt.

So when she disappears, leaving only a long letter behind, they can but suspect that her conscience finally killed her.

But the letter is not what anyone expected. It tells two chilling, darkly disturbing stories. One is a story of bloody nights and magical gifts, of children lost to the woods, of husbands made from twigs and leaves and feathers and bones …

The other is the story of a little girl who was cruelly treated and grew up crooked in the shadows …

But which story is true? And where is Cassie now?