I've probably lied to you. That's habit. I lie to everyone about my family....

Daniel Laird has returned to his remote family home in Norfolk to care for his ailing artist father. Living an isolated existence - with his father unable to speak and only their brusque housekeeper, Maggie, for company - Daniel describes the strangeness of coming home after an eight-year absence in a series of vivid and passionate letters to his sister; his boss; and Alice, his one true love. But it is not until he discovers a hidden cache of his father's paintings that the truth begins to surface. The more Daniel writes, the more we learn about the past and about why he left all those years ago - and the more we begin to fear for those he claims to hold dear.

Taut and suspenseful, this powerful novel compulsively unfolds in Daniel's own hand, exploring the terrifying power of the mind to deceive not only others but - most frightening of all - ourselves.

S. E. Craythorne is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Her poetry and prose have previously been published by Gatehouse Press, Poetry Unbound and ink sweat and tears. In 2013 she was awarded a place on the Metal Culture Lab programme and performed at the Shorelines Festival.

An extract from Craythorne's debut novel, Less Than Kind, was shortlisted for the 2013 Writer's Retreat Competition and was longlisted the same year for Mslexia's Women's Novel Competition. In 2014 she was awarded Arts Council funding to write her second novel.

Brought up on a smallholding in rural Norfolk, S. E. Craythorne has also lived in Manchester and Hong Kong. She has worked as a bookseller, a journalist, an artist's model, an English teacher and a librarian. S. E . Craythorne now lives and works in Norwich.