Aspiring author Ivy Seidel accepts a part-time position teaching writing to a group of convicted criminals hoping the experience will add depth and darkness to her own work. But in the haunting writings of charismatic inmate Vance Harrow she discovers a talent possibly greater than her own. And in the startling, disturbing stories Harrow has to tell, Ivy finds a dangerous new purpose-and a terrifying temptation that lures her into an inescapable world...

"The internationally bestselling author and host of The Graham Norton Show returns with a tense and darky comic novel that casts a caustic light on the relationship between mothers and daughters and truth and self-preservation"--

"Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Severely dyslexic and wanting to know more, he took it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford's...