For several hundred years the Ingram family has lived under a curse - the taint of homicidal madness which manifests itself in the females every 80 or 90 years - and it appears the madness has struck again in the beautiful Imogen. But Dan Tudor, a writer commissioned to produce a feature on the family, is not convinced. His investigations are about to lead him to a horror beyond imagining.
After a convent education, which included writing plays for the Lower Third to perform, Sarah Rayne embarked on a variety of jobs, but - probably inevitably - returned again and again to writing. Her first novel appeared in 1982, and since then her books have also been published in America, Holland and Germany.
The daughter of an Irish comedy actor, she was for many years active in amateur theatre, and lists among her hobbies, theatre, history, music, and old houses - much of her inspiration comes from old buildings and their histories and atmospheres. To these interests, she adds ghosts and ghost stories, and - having grown up in the Sixties - good conversation around a well-stocked dinner table.