In this "unsettling and resonant novel" by the acclaimed author of Mr. Wroe's Virgins, an orphan seeks revenge on her birth mother in rural Scotland ( Michiko Kakutani , The New York Times).

Having spent her traumatic childhood in and out of foster homes, twenty-eight-year-old Nikki Black has decided to finally take control of her life. That begins with finding her birth mother, Phyllis: the woman who abandoned her as a newborn at a London post office.

The plan is simple. She'll find her mother, demand the answers she's always needed, then exact her revenge. But when Nikki tracks Phyllis down on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, she also meets the brother she never knew she had.

Calum may be simple-minded, but he is full of stories-about his island home, and about Phyllis, the manipulative herbalist who keeps him under her thumb. As Nikki changes her plans to help Calum, all three of their lives begin to unravel in this "brooding, furiously powerful tale" inspired by Shakspeare's The Tempest ( Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

"[A] caustically memorable literary shocker . . . Fans of Ian McEwan should relish this stylish, charismatic addition to Britain's gallery of antiheroes." -Publishers Weekly