The Burning Girls

A woman trying to outrun her past uncovers a great evil in the fourth riveting and psychologically compelling novel from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man. Welcome to Keeper's Croft. Five hundred years ago, protestant martyrs were burned at the stake. Forty years ago, two teenaged girls disappeared without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself. Reverend Alex Brooks, a single mother with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping to make a fresh start and find some peace. She left Nottingham after a vulnerable child died. It's a death she could have prevented, one that still haunts her. But Alex discovers that peace is the last thing she will find in Keeper's Croft. Instead, the previous vicar has left a message. An old exorcism kit and a suicide note instruct Alex to search for the truth about the village's history and the girls' disappearance. And when both Alex and her daughter Flo are troubled by strange sightings in the old chapel--apparitions that seem all too real--it becomes apparent that there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest. But discovering the truth is hard in a village where everyone has something to protect, everyone has links with the village's bloody past and no one trusts an outsider.