Jake Whyte is the sole resident of an old farmhouse on an unnamed British island, a place of ceaseless rains and battering winds. It’s just her, her untamed companion, Dog, and a flock of sheep. Which is how she wanted it to be. But something is coming for the sheep – every few nights it picks one off, leaves it in rags.

It could be anything. There are foxes in the woods, a strange boy and a strange man, rumours of an obscure, formidable beast. And there is Jake’s unknown past, perhaps breaking into the present, a story hidden thousands of miles away and years ago, in a landscape of different colour and sound, a story held in the scars that stripe her back.

Winner of the Miles Franklin Award
Winner of the Encore Award
Winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award
Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Prize
Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction

Read a sample here