Did you ever think, my friend, that we would come to this? When we were swapping terrible jokes between classes, when we wrote bad poetry and ranted about movies with all the abandon of people whom supervillains would never touch, did you ever think we would one day find ourselves in the middle of a war? My mouth twists around the words I cannot say.

We are trying to stanch a wave of blood rolling over an entire country. But you are working to resist the growing darkness in our country’s regime, and tonight you tell me about how difficult it is: you work yourself to the bone, but you can never really know if it’s enough.

Perhaps we both would rather talk about the bright spots in our lives: taking care of pets, growing vegetables in the garden, playing farming games with retro graphics, and an adorable cast. You and I are chatting about work one evening in early September, the conversation of friends who, two decades after meeting in high school, still can’t quite grasp how to shoulder the weight of our world. But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back.This is a story about the myths built into our spines. Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another.

Silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. A struggling silhouette artist in Victorian Bath seeks out a renowned child spirit medium in order to speak to the dead - and to try and identify their killers - in this beguiling new tale from Laura Purcell. 'Dripping with atmosphere with a corkscrew plot, Laura Purcell just gets better and better' STACEY HALLS 'It truly kept me guessing to the very last page' SONIA VELTON Wicked deeds require the cover of darkness.

The shape of darkness