Author Description

On New Year's Eve 1928, as a great thunderstorm beats about the Isle of Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands, Evelyn Bearings murders her adoptive family; members of the nature worshipping sect known as the Children. The Bearings have always been strange. They live away from people in their crumbling castle by the old circle of stones. Though they call themselves the Children they are not a family but orphans and runaways taken in by Uncle. They dance in the stone circle at dawn, conduct arcane druidic rituals with snakes. Evelyn is the strangest of them all. She can read minds. Only one of the Children can inherit the Isle from Uncle and become the adder. Eve is certain that it will be her. She is Uncle's favourite. But the Isle holds more secrets than Eve knows. As the year dies and that fateful night approaches her beliefs will be challenged, her loyalties tested to breaking point. Evelyn will be forced to confront truths she has been fleeing for many years - and it will end in death.