'Playfully elegant and effortlessly seductive' Telegraph

An enthralling mystery of dangerous secrets, desperate men and macabre murder

April 1808: A storm sweeps across the islands of the Baltic Sea, destroying the village of Lower Slaughter as it goes. Into this ruined land comes missing-persons finder Whilbert Stroop, on the trail of a lost miniature library and its protector. Almost crossing his path is Griselda Liit, a refugee from Lower Slaughter, carrying her father's secrets back to the island of her birth. Behind Griselda, in the shadows, a strange figure follows for a very different reason. Stroop's investigation will lead him from the flooded valley to sinister printworks, and to the strange island archipelago of Saaremaa in the Baltic Sea. Once there, he must unravel the increasingly tangled strands of past and present that surround the islands, and delve into a mysterious world of ancient Brotherhoods, insurrection, piracy, and death.

"'Just as bloody as The Da Vinci Code ... however, much better written'" - Scotsman

"'Clio Gray is a master of atmosphere and sensuousness. She combines historical realism with the bizarre, whimsy with the macabre. Reading her is like being at a sumptuous feast in a palace, just before it is stormed'" - Alan Bissett