“Bestselling writer Luca D’Andrea has concocted a fearsome witches’ brew of myth, memory and mayhem” Sunday Times Crime Club

A haunting thriller drawing on myths, legends and fairy tales, set in a mysterious Italian valley – from Italy’s bestselling answer to Stephen King.

“D’Andrea piles on the action and the atmosphere with the panache of a seasoned writer” Marcel Berlins, The Times

It begins with a slap in the face.

Out walking his St Bernard, Tony Carcano is confronted by a girl on a motorbike who shows him a photograph from his past. Of him posing with the body of a young woman. Smiling.

“Why were you laughing?”

It’s not the last Tony sees of Sybille Knapp, an orphan whose mother drowned herself in Kreuzwirt lake in 1999. That was the official verdict. Before long, Tony, a bestselling writer, is turning his imagination to working out what really happened.

But Kreuzwirt is a sullen, silent community, loyal to the powerful Perkman family, who will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried. And there are other forces at work in this valley. Stories of an ancient evil. Whispers of a figure who stands between this world and the next.

The Wanderer sings and his song is the wind.

Translated from the Italian by Katherine Gregor

“Bestselling writer Luca D’Andrea has concocted a fearsome witches’ brew of myth, memory and mayhem” Sunday Times Crime Club

A haunting thriller drawing on myths, legends and fairy tales, set in a mysterious Italian valley – from Italy’s bestselling answer to Stephen King.

“D’Andrea piles on the action and the atmosphere with the panache of a seasoned writer” Marcel Berlins, The Times

It begins with a slap in the face.

Out walking his St Bernard, Tony Carcano is confronted by a girl on a motorbike who shows him a photograph from his past. Of him posing with the body of a young woman. Smiling.

“Why were you laughing?”

It’s not the last Tony sees of Sybille Knapp, an orphan whose mother drowned herself in Kreuzwirt lake in 1999. That was the official verdict. Before long, Tony, a bestselling writer, is turning his imagination to working out what really happened.

But Kreuzwirt is a sullen, silent community, loyal to the powerful Perkman family, who will stop at nothing to keep the truth buried. And there are other forces at work in this valley. Stories of an ancient evil. Whispers of a figure who stands between this world and the next.

The Wanderer sings and his song is the wind.

Translated from the Italian by Katherine Gregor

“Can be compared (with no fear of hyperbole) to Stephen King and Jo Nesbø” – Massimo Vincenz, La Repubblica.

“D’Andrea piles on the action and the atmosphere with the panache of a seasoned writer” Marcel Berlins, The Times.

Marlene Wegener is on the run.

She has stolen something from her husband, something priceless, irreplaceable.

But she doesn’t get very far. When her car veers off a bleak midwinter road she takes refuge in the remote home of Simon Keller, a tough mountain man who lives alone with his demons. Here in her high mountain sanctuary, she begins to rekindle a sense of herself: tough, capable, no longer the trophy on a gangster’s arm.

But Herr Wegener does not know how to forgive, and in his rage he makes a pact with the devil.

The Trusted Man. He cannot be called off, he cannot be reasoned with and one way or another he will get the job done.

Unless, of course, he’s beaten to it . . .

Translated from the Italian by Howard Curtis and Katherine Gregor