For fans of Michelle Paver and Sarah Waters, the first in a haunting quartet of ghost stories set in the wilds of Scotland. 'I was so impressed by Hawthorn ' MICHELLE PAVER , author of Dark Matter 'Delightfully brooding and gloriously gothic, Hawthorn sucked me in like the deepest bog, refusing to let me go' CJ COOKE , author of The Book of Witching 'Reminded me of The Little Stranger . . . a hugely entertaining and evocative treat ' BRIDGET COLLINS , author of The Binding 'A new classic' SARA SHERIDAN , author of The Fair Botanists 'The best Scottish ghost story of the 21st century so far' THE HERALD _________ Caithness, October 1871. The Ordnance Survey are charting Scotland's most remote north-easterly county, a bleak landscape of endless moorland and lonely crofts. When a strange vision leads cartographer Robert Sutherland out onto the moor, an accident leaves him inches from death. He is taken to Leask House, to recuperate under the care of Mrs Sinclair and her beautiful daughter Isabel. At first, Robert thinks the dreadful visions that plague him at Leask House are the result of the laudanum he has been prescribed. But as events take ever stranger and more terrifying turns, Robert begins to wonder whether his presence at Leask House is really a coincidence at all. Someone - or something - has summoned him here. And they don't intend for him to leave.