Description:

Librarian note: See alternate cover edition here. DCI Nelson has been receiving threatening letters telling him to 'go to the stone circle and rescue the innocent who is buried there'. He is shaken, not only because children are very much on his mind, with Michelle's baby due to be born, but because although the letters are anonymous, they are somehow familiar. They read like the letters that first drew him into the case of The Crossing Places, and to Ruth. But the author of those letters is dead. Or are they?Meanwhile Ruth is working on a dig in the Saltmarsh - another henge, known by the archaeologists as the stone circle - trying not to think about the baby. Then bones are found on the site, and identified as those of Margaret Lacey, a twelve-year-old girl who disappeared thirty years ago.As the Margaret Lacey case progresses, more and more aspects of it begin to hark back to that first case of The Crossing Places, and to Scarlett Henderson, the girl Nelson couldn't save. The past is reaching out for Ruth and Nelson, and its grip is deadly. **In this delightfully creepy mystery, Ruth Galloway―whom #1** New York Times **bestselling author Louise Penny calls “a captivating amateur sleuth”―is haunted by a ghost from her past, just as her future lands on shaky ground. ¶ “Its patented combination of mysterious circumstances, police procedure, and agonizing relationship problems will keep you reading, and feeling, all night.” ―** Kirkus Reviews **(starred review)** ¶ Ruth’s partner in crime, DCI Nelson, has been receiving threatening letters. They are anonymous, yet reminiscent of ones he has received in the past, from the person who drew him into a case that’s haunted him for years. At the same time, Ruth receives a letter purporting to be from that very same person―her former mentor, and the reason she first started working with Nelson. But the author of those letters is dead. Or is he? The past is reaching out for Ruth and Nelson, and its grip is deadly.