Nicci French

Abbie Devereaux wakes in the dark. She is hooded and bound, with no idea where she is or how she got there. Kept alive by a man she never sees, his only promise is that eventually he will kill her – like the others. But Abbie has spirit and bloody-mindedness on her side. She counts the seconds spent alone and plots her survival. Above all she dreams of returning to normal, careless, everyday life – the land of the living. Grasping at memories, Abbie recalls snatches of her identity, her career, and her disintegrating relationship with her boyfriend. Is there a connection between her real life and the voice in the darkness? And how can she survive in a place where fear becomes madness and the effort to survive seems too much to bear?

When Miranda Cotton finds her boyfriend Brendan reading her diary, she breaks off the relationship. When her sister phones her to tell her about her new boyfriend – Brendan – what began as an embarrassment becomes an infestation, and then even more terrifying than her worst nightmare.