A gruesome, contemporary gothic thriller about what awaits us after death - angels or the devil. A fast-paced, dark, malevolent, and powerful novel, shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal in 2011 and longlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 2010. It is summer. Rebecca, removed from the bustle of London, her friends, and what she thinks is the beginning of a promising romantic relationship, is an unwilling visitor to Winterfold. Ferelith already lives in Winterfold - a place that doesn't easily let go of its visitors and knows it inside out: the beach, the ruined cliff paths, the village dirt roads, the woods, the deserted churches, and the ruined graves, year by year consumed by the sea. Against their logic, Rebecca and Ferelith become friends, and during that long, hot, and stifling summer, they discover more about each other - and Winterfold - than they would like. More haunting secrets are revealed, which would be better left forgotten. Alongside Rebecca's and Ferelith's stories, the tale of the 17th-century Rector and Dr. Barrieux, master of Winterfold Hall, is woven, whose strange and bloody afterlife experiments could make angels weep and the devil scream.