The hidden people - Alison Littlewood

The bestselling author of Richard & Judy Book Club hit The Cold Season returns with a chilling Victorian mystery - where superstition and myth bleed into real life with tragic consequences.

Pretty Lizzie Higgs is gone, burned to death on her own hearth - but was she really a changeling, as her husband insists?

Albie Mirralls met his cousin only once, in 1851, within the grand glass arches of the Crystal Palace, but unable to countenance the rumours that surround her murder, he leaves his young wife in London and travels to Halfoak, a village steeped in superstition.

Albie begins to look into Lizzie's death, but in this place where the old tales hold sway and the 'Hidden People' supposedly roam, answers are slippery and further tragedy is just a step away . . .

'This is an intriguing and unsettling scenario. Littlewood's descriptions are picturesque and her prose convincingly dated and beautifully lyrical' - Sunday Express