“Think for a moment what paper means to people. How ubiquitous it is in everyday life…A material of paradoxes, it can be used and abused in a thousand ways and still be the same under the skin. It is the embodiment of man’s achievement, and yet it is as transient and as flimsy as tissue….In its strengths and weaknesses, faults and flaws, it is intensely human…..”

Charlie, a war correspondent turned author, haunted by her worst journalistic experiences, turns to the history of paper and the materials of JMW Turner to distract her from her failed marriage and the ghosts of her past. Her research brings her into contact with Alan, a highly successful artist and Turner scholar. She falls under his seductive spell, only to discover that Alan has plenty of ghosts of his own.

Aroused by his sensuality, drawn inexorably into his troubled past, and finding parallels with her own and that of Turner, Charlie finds herself moving closer and closer to the edge of mental endurance, and ever nearer to dangers she doesn’t even know exist. A book rich in history and war, love and obsession, yet intertwined with a thriller’s mysterious undercurrent, this novel is designed to wrong-foot the reader time and again. Raw and vivid, elegant and thoughtful, its ending is clever, unexpected and cruel, giving an experience that lasts well beyond the final page.