The Weight of Angels

Catriona McPherson, Little Brown, £8.99

What secrets do the dark bones of Dundrennan Abbey hold?

A year ago, she was happily married, bringing up her beloved son, running her successful beauty salon and living with her loving husband in her dream house.

Now, Ali McGovern’s dreams are slipping away and all her old ghosts are coming back to haunt her. A job at Howell Hall, the private psychiatric facility near her rented cottage and the ruined abbey, seems too good to be true. But why has the couple who run the place employed her when she is clearly not qualified to do it? How can they afford to pay her so well? And what are they hiding?

When a body is discovered in a shallow grave by the abbey on Ali’s first day at work, it feels like one last horror. But it’s just the beginning of her descent into a nightmare world she never imagined existed so close to home.

If you enjoyed the author’s last thriller, The Child Garden, you’ll love this book. It offers the same nerve-tingling frisson that will make you think twice before you turn off the light.

Catriona McPherson was born in Edinburgh. She lived there, in Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire and Galloway before moving to California in 2010. She has a PhD in linguistics from Edinburgh University, and lectured in English at Leeds University. She now writes full time.