Sell the Hall unseen; burn it to the ground and plough the earth with salt, if you will; but never live there.' London, the 1880s. A young girl grows up in a household marked by death, her father distant, her mother in perpetual mourning for the child she lost. Desperate to coax her mother back to health, Constance Langton takes her to a s ance. Perhaps they will find comfort from beyond the grave. But that s ance has tragic consequences. Constance is left alone, her only legacy a mysterious bequest will blight her life. So begins The S ance, John Harwood's brilliant second novel, a gripping, dark mystery set in late Victorian England. It is a world of apparitions, of disappearances and unnatural phenomena, of betrayal and blackmail and black-hearted villains - and murder. For Constance s bequest comes in two parts: a house, and a mystery. Years before a family disappeared at Wraxford Hall, a terrifying stately home near the Suffolk coast. Now Constance must find the truth behind the mystery, even at the cost of her life. Because without the truth, she is lost.