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About The Book

One night in the woods.
A party gone wrong.
A community changed forever…

Everyone in the small town of Thorncombe knows the tales of the haunted woods where the birds don’t sing and a girl in a white dress roams, luring people to their deaths. But when a girl in white is found dead the morning after Halloween, carefully posed at the bottom of an old stone folly, the community is thrown into shock and turmoil.

Local police detective Ben Chase is assigned to the murder investigation, but when the victim is identified as a student from a prestigious nearby school, tensions rise.

Was she the victim of a party prank gone wrong, or does the girl’s death represent something more sinister and ritualistic? As the investigation unfolds and the noose tightens around Chase’s own family, the only thing anyone can be sure of is that no one is safe until this violent killer is caught…

A tense, clever and claustrophobic thriller where no one is who they seem and the danger lies just out of sight.

About The Author

Photograph by Lucy Williams

Hannah Richell was born in Kent and spent her childhood years in Buckinghamshire and Canada. After graduating from the University of Nottingham, she worked in the book publishing and film industries in both London and Sydney. She is a dual citizen of Great Britain and Australia, and currently lives in the South West of England with her family. Richell is the author of international bestsellers Secrets of the Tides (2012), The Shadow Year (2014), The Peacock Summer (2019) and The River Home (2020). Her work has been translated into twenty-one languages.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK (July 17, 2025)
  • Length: 400 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781398528024

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