First published 2014
Holly Sykes storms out after fighting with her mother. She's fifteen and different from other runaways. Voices she calls "the radio people" have spoken to her since childhood. As Holly walks through the English countryside, strange visions reshape what she sees around her. A group of mystics has noticed her psychic abilities, and so have their enemies. Holly's weekend away becomes something much worse when someone close to her vanishes without explanation. This disappearance marks her family forever and follows Holly through every stage of her life. The mystery touches everyone she will ever love, including people not yet born. A Cambridge student chasing money and power, a father who only feels alive while reporting from war zones in Iraq, and a writer whose books no longer sell all become part of this hidden conflict. Their stories span continents and centuries, from Swiss mountains in medieval times to Australian wilderness in the 1800s, from a Shanghai hotel to a New York townhouse in the coming years. Each person discovers that an invisible war plays out alongside ordinary life.
Genres: science-fiction, literary-fiction, mystery, fantasy, paranormal, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: chosen-one, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Australia, Cambridge, England, Iraq, New York, Shanghai, Switzerland
Period: 1800s, Medieval, Present Day
624 pages · Hardcover · Random House
Content warnings: death, mental-illness, violence