Intricate and crisp, witty and solemn: a book with special and dangerous properties,' Hilary Mantel said of Rotherweird, the first book in the series; M.R. Carey called it 'Baroque, Byzantine and beautiful - not to mention bold'.

The town of Rotherweird, independent from the rest of England since Elizabeth I, has resumed its abnormal normality after a happy ending to the travails of summer.

But is it really all over?

Disturbing omens multiply: a funeral delivers a cryptic warning; an ancient portrait speaks; the Herald disappears - and democracy threatens the covenant between town and countryside. An intricate plot, centuries in the making, is on the move.

Everything is pointing to one objective: the resurrection of Rotherweird's dark Elizabethan past, and to one date: the Winter Solstice.

In Rotherweird, nothing and nobody are quite what they seem.