Beth is desperate to return to normality. After a years-long ordeal, her daughter is finally home and safe. But Carmel has questions she can't ignore about the cult that kidnapped her, and about the preacher who gave her another girl's name.

Digging into her past, Carmel uncovers secrets which suggest that she wasn't the only lost girl - and which puts her in danger all over again. While her mother struggles to salvage the safety they've only just found, Carmel tries to come to terms with who she has become. One question, a mystery at the heart of her disappearance as a child, haunts her:

What happened to the other lost girls?

My name is Ruby. I live with Barbara and Mick. They're not my real parents, but they tell me what to do, and what to say.

But there are things I won't say. I won't tell them I'm going to hunt for my real parents. I don't say a word about Shadow, who sits on the stairs, or the Wasp Lady I saw. Or that I'm a hunter for lost souls.

I'm going to be with my real family. And I won't let anyone stop me.

Phoebe stands on Pulteney Bridge, tights gashed from toe to thigh. The shock of mangled metal and blood-stained walls flashes through her mind as she tries to cover her face so she won't be recognised. It wouldn't do to be spotted looking like this. She's missing a shoe. She feels sick. Phoebe thought murder and murder happened. Thoughts are just thoughts, they said. Now she knows they were wrong. At home, Phoebe arranges the scissors and knives so they point toward her mother's room. She is exhausted, making sure there's no trace of herself - not a single hair, not even her scent - left anywhere in the house. She must not let her thoughts unravel, because if they do, there's no telling who might be caught in the crossfire, and Phoebe will have to live with the consequences.

Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa First Novel Award Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award 'Mesmerising, compulsive, deliciously dark' LUCY FOLEY Carmel is missing - but doesn't know she's lost. When sensitive, distracted eight-year-old Carmel becomes separated from her mother at a local children's festival, a man claiming to be her estranged grandfather finds her - and takes her. Unable to accept the possibility that her daughter might be gone for good, Beth makes it her mission to find her. But in what she's told is her new family, Carmel has embarked on an extraordinary journey, one that will make her question who she is - and who she might become. 'Keeps the reader turning pages at a frantic clip . . . What's most powerful here is not whodunnit, or even why, but how this mother and daughter bear their separation.' CELESTE NG **Carmel and Beth's story continues in The Lost Girls - pre-order now!**