'The pre-eminent novelist of Renaissance Italy' S. J. PARRIS, OBSERVER

'Dunant triumphs, like all good novelists: in a deft, shrewd, precise use of killer detail' CHRISTOBEL KENT, GUARDIAN

'She writes like a painter, and thinks like a philosopher . . . A tour de force of storytelling' AMANDA FOREMAN

'A writer of powerful historical imagination and wicked literary gifts' SIMON SCHAMA

Anna packs her bags one day without telling anyone where and why she is going - just that she'll be back soon. Her thoughts as she boards a plane, are that this journey will give her time to think about her life - as a woman hitting forty, a journalist and a single mother. She has no premonition that she will become a statistic in a missing person file. Left at home is Anna's beloved six-year-old daughter Lily, her gay friend Paul, who is surrogate father to Lily, and her eccentric best friend Estella. When Anna doesn't return, they make uneasy excuses until, as time passes, the mind-numbing possibility that Anna might not be coming back becomes terrifyingly real.

And while those closest to her battle with their imaginations, Anna is on a dark journey - in one scenario Anna is on a ravishing, sexual adventure, on the other, much darker voyage, she is the victim of a stranger's dangerous sexual fantasy. In a masterpiece of emotionally intelligent and nerve-wracking suspense, Sarah Dunant takes us to the very edge.