Florida, 1898: the new Tampa Bay Hotel, a fairy-tale castle anchored by the water\'s edge, is a winter magnet for businessmen and celebrities. The hotel’s one permanent resident, the enigmatic wig-maker Monsieur Goulet III, becomes entranced by the silver-blonde hair of a beautiful young widow and is inspired to create the ‘transformation’ that will be his masterpiece. But the raw material he needs is hard to come by, and so he drives his resourceful night-scavenger to increasingly extreme efforts. As the fates of the widow, the wigmaker and the scavenger become entwined, Goulet\'s true nature begins to show itself. ‘This really is a novel to get lost in…A highly original read, as beautiful as it is terrifying, which manages to be riotously chilling without ever going over the top’ Sunday Express ‘Chidgey is a gifted writer…her confident, commanding prose and vivid atmospherics hold the attention’ Guardian ‘Chidgey spins a horror story which, miraculously avoiding easy sensationalism, is both troubling and haunting’ Sunday Times ‘Beautiful…Her previous novels were highly praised for their intelligence, their lucid prose and their characterization. Here she continues to demonstrate those strengths, but in very different territory’