The sins of the past haunt an isolated farmhouse as a snowstorm rages outside . . . It's not shaping up to be a very merry Christmas. Clover Moon feels trapped in her life as a farmer's wife. She certainly doesn't enjoy hosting Fergus's mother, Violet, who always finds new ways to publicly humiliate her unsatisfactory daughter-in-law. But would Violet ever seek a more violent way of expressing her disapproval?

Violet is a medium, and the voices of the dead sometimes encourage her to do disturbing things. During her stay at the farmhouse, she claims to sense an intrusive presence. Fergus then discovers the dead body of a woman floating in their flooded cellar, and the elderly Miss Bates, a resident of a nearby senior home and a client of Violet's, is missing . . . With her acute sense of human nature and gift for suspense, reminiscent of Barbara Vine, Gillian White will leave you guessing until the very end.