February, 1929. The Regent Hotel in Birmingham is a place of deception and glamour. Behind its six-storeyed fa ade, guests sip absinthe cocktails on velvet banquettes, while the staff navigate the hotel s labyrinthine below stairs to ensure the finest service is always at hand.

In the early evening, psychoanalyst Nora Dickinson checks in under a false name. It s unlike Nora to deceive her aversion to lying borders on the pathological but she s travelling with an agenda. Having shadowed the famous opera singer, Berenice Oxbow, from Zurich, she s determined not to lose sight of her now.

But when a terrible snow storm isolates the hotel and its guests from the outside world, reality appears to shift. Nora s grip loosens, and the nightmares she s worked hard to control begin to bare their teeth. Kate Mascarenhas s latest novel offers her readers a horrifying ride through murder, madness and the darkest recesses of the mind.