Margaret Forster’s twenty-sixth work of fiction is a subtle, psychologically probing of personal history, guilt, and redemption. Julia, a troubled and isolated child with few friends, is tormented by the irreparable damage she believes she has caused her family during a seemingly innocuous outing with her cousin’s newborn child. Haunted by guilt and anxiety, she becomes a child psychologist and, later, a magistrate. Yet as The Guardian notes, “It's a gripping read without being a thriller because we are drawn ineluctably into something darker that we sense is always floating just beneath the surface of what Julia chooses to tell us.” Executed with razor-sharp control and remarkable confidence.

Margaret Forster
Margaret Forster was born in 1938 and studied history at Somerville College, Oxford. She is the author of many successful and acclaimed novels, including Georgy Girl (made into a popular movie and Broadway musical), Lady's Maid, and Diary of an Ordinary Woman, as well as two bestselling memoirs (Hidden Lives and Precious Lives) and biographies, including the award-winning Daphne du Maurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller. She is married to the writer and journalist Hunter Davies.

• Sep 19 2014
  New York Times Sunday Book Review: "A mesmerizing, unsettling novel."