Richard Tempest is lost. His boring, prosaic existence has left him wondering if his life has nothing more to offer than teaching ungrateful students, fending off the political manoeuvring of his peers and occassionally indulging in obligatory, unimaginative, unsatisfying sex. That is until he meets the enchanting and mysterious Ligeia.He finds himself drawn into a darker, altogether more exhilarating, reality. Intoxicated by Ligeia's licentious lifestyle, Richard embarks on a journey of self-discovery that all-too-quickly threatens to spiral out of control. As he becomes increasingly infatuated with her, he is plunged into a seductive world that includes late-night sexual encounters in cemeteries, troilism and the occasional episode of terrifying violence. Theirs is a relationship that is as dangerous as it is exciting. Obsessed with sex, art and death, Ligeia leads him along a devastating path that is impossible for him to resist, where choices must be made that will change his life forever.

Matthew Stent is an unconventional therapist, whose insight into the damaged lives of his clients has become unhealthily voyeuristic. As he charts his life and the lives of others through a series of often brutal encounters and acerbic observations, his dubious moral compass leads him further and further from accepted normality and towards an altogether darker, unprofessional and more dangerous path. When he becomes infatuated with Terri, the wife of his latest client, Matthew's life takes an unexpected twist that leads him on a journey to the mystic heart of England to meet the enigmatic Wiccan High Priest Tobias Greylock, and the shocking discovery that reality is more fragile than anything he could have ever imagined.