Guilt [Paperback]

A story beset by menacing undercurrents. Grimshaw's novels evoke many of the contradictions of her native country (OBSERVER )

Grimshaw creates sharply drawn urban landscapes, whose noirish, unsettling atmosphere is powerfully caught. (THE TIMES )

Charlotte Grimshaw creates an overwhelming sense of despair and romance. (TLS )

Extraordinary. It's engaging, gripping and full of inspired, risky prose scribbled with evident relish. (TIME OUT )

*Mysterious suspense novel about a woman's psychological decline.

Abigail Allen's deepest, darkest secret is that when she was thirteen years old, she was responsible for killing her parents and boyfriend in an accident. Now a cellist with a modest career, guilt has become Abigail's most constant companion. She has reconciled herself to living alone. Alone, she knows, is what she deserves. Until she meets Silas Graves. Charming, persuasive Silas, the photographer who knows about her past but loves her in spite of it - maybe even because of it. Silas has his own dark secrets, though he's never experienced real guilt. Few things shock him, and nothing is as important to him as love. But the women he's loved most in his life, his mother and his sister, Jules, have both, in his eyes, betrayed him. Silas, a possessive, jealous man, can forgive almost anything except betrayal. Abigail is different. Abigail needs him, adores him. And besides, they have two things in common. Their secrets. And death. Abigail won't betray him. She'd better not.

Hilary Norman is the author of fourteen internationally bestselling novels written under her own name and translated into seventeen languages.