'Intricate and crisp, witty and solemn. Line by line, silent and adroit, it opens a series of trap-doors in the reader's imagination' Hilary Mantel, Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall

Welcome back to Rotherweird.

The town of Rotherweird has been independent from the rest of England for four hundred years, to protect a deadly secret.

Sir Veronal Slickstone is dead, his bid to exploit that secret consigned to dust, leaving Rotherweird to resume its abnormal normality after the travails of the summer . . . but someone is playing a very long game.

Disturbing omens multiply: a funeral delivers a cryptic warning; an ancient portrait speaks; the Herald disappears - and democracy threatens the uneasy covenant between town and countryside.

Geryon Wynter's intricate plot, centuries in the making, is on the move.

Everything points to one objective: the resurrection of Rotherweird's dark Elizabethan past - and to one date: the Winter Solstice.

Wynter is coming . . .

'Baroque, Byzantine and beautiful - not to mention bold. An enthralling puzzle picture of a book' M. R. Carey, bestselling author of The Girl With All The Gifts