Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can't afford to divorce.

Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can't afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can't understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded.

Mud, mice and quarrels are one thing - but why is their rent so low? What is the mystery surrounding their unappealing new home? The beauty of the landscape is ravishing, yet it conceals a dark side involving poverty, revenge, abuse and violence which will rise up to threaten them.

Sally Verity, happily married but unhappily childless knows a different side to country life, as both a Health Visitor and a sheep farmer's wife; and when Lottie's innocent teenage son Xan gets a zero-hours contract at a local pie factory, he sees yet another. At the end of their year, the lives of all will be changed for ever.

A suspenseful black comedy, this is a rich, compassionate and enthralling novel in its depiction of the English countryside, and the potentially lethal interplay between money and marriage.

'Part Trollope and part Jilly Cooper, and as satisfying a novel as I have read in years. It is a wickedly observant comedy of manners, very alert to the way we live now, but somehow never cruel or judgmental' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent

'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' India Knight

'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' Sarah Perry

'Absolutely magnificent' Marian Keyes