A brilliant young woman and an older, more powerful man in a tale of slow-burning obsession and retribution - for fans of Patricia Highsmith and Rachel Cusk

'This psychological thriller examines what happens when the lines between victim and predator, loyalty and obsession become blurred' Mail on Sunday

'Spellbinding' Anna Funder

'Precise, cool, complex' Observer

'Striking, stylish, compelling... Her language is perfectly measured, her imagery precise, the settings lush and tactile, gorgeously rendered' Sydney Morning Herald

Vita is an undergraduate when she catches the attention of Royce. She is sharply focused, slightly solitary, evidently gifted. Something in her reminds him of his own youth, of the woman he loved then and of what happened to her. So he grants her a scholarship - a transaction that will bind her to him, in subtle and inescapable ways, for the rest of her life.

What passes between them haunts Vita for years. She spends her life playing cat and mouse with his shadow, seeing it slip across the mountains behind her, feeling its chill at her back. So when, decades later, Royce gets in touch once again, Vita has her own reasons for responding. He still sees her as the helpless ingénue. But she is not that any more.

'Dovey does not shy away from bluntly confronting big questions head-on... Trembling with meaning, unsettlingly alive, a literary page-turner' Kirkus

Ceridwen Dovey's debut novel, Blood Kin, was published around the world, shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Award, and selected for the US National Book Foundation's prestigious '5 Under 35' honours list. The Wall Street Journal named her as one of their 'artists to watch'. Her collection of stories, Only the Animals, won the 2014 Readings New Australian Writing Award. She lives in Sydney.