This image gives way to another - a hanging corpse with violets stuffed in its mouth - which leads us into a maze of beguiling paths and wrong turnings, disappearances and revelations, unaccountable motives and cryptic deeds, as this compelling mystery swerves towards a starling vision at its centre.

An extraordinary work of fiction, from one of the world's most exceptional writers.

The year is 1736 and five travellers are journeying across Exmoor on horseback, their purpose unknown. One evening they stop at a village inn for some rest and, soon after, hear that a man has been hanged nearby and that another is missing. What follows is a maze of beguiling paths and wrong turnings, rituals and revelations, unaccountable motives and cryptic deeds, as the mystery swerves towards a startling vision at its centre.

'This altogether admirable novel serves, as all literature should, the forces of subversion' Anthony Burgess, Observer

'The reader is carried headlong into a maze of violent death, bizarre sex, disguise and terror' Sunday Times