Janet grew up with her father; her mother, she was always told, died when she was three. Her father's stories were of her mother's beauty, their early love - tales stopping short of tragedy. But now, living an ocean away from her childhood home, she unexpectedly inherits a house. The house had belonged to her mother, who in fact lived long into Janet's adulthood. In a state of shock she travels north with the key: and finds an old stone cottage at the sea's edge. She presumes it will be empty. It is not.

Tom was raised by his mother, travelling from one place to another, never settling, his only stability the stories she told him - stories of shapeshifters, danger, impossible love. Now he hides away in an old stone cottage at the sea's edge, waiting for the woman he knows will come.

Here is a world of truth and terror, where lives and stories become so interwoven that in the end, all distinctions are lost. Janet and Tom are possessed by their stories: can they possess each other, too?

Erica Wagner's charged prose pulses with an intensity that will leave the reader breathless. This long-awaited first novel will establish her as one of the most powerful literary voices of her generation.

Erica Wagner was born in New York City. She is the author of Gravity: Stories (Granta) and Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters (Faber). She lives in London, where she is the Literary Editor of The Times.