"It's spring 1971 and P.I. Vera Kelly and her girlfriend, Max, leave their cozy Brooklyn apartment for an emergency visit to Max's estranged family in Los Angeles. Max's parents are divorcing--her father is already engaged to a much younger woman and under the sway of an occultist charlatan; her mother has left their estate in a hurry with no indication of return. Max, who hasn't seen her family since they threw her out at the age of twenty-two, prepares...

"Ann Cleeves -- New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the Vera and Shetland series, both of which are hit TV shows -- returns with the extraordinary follow-up to The Long Call, in the Two Rivers series, soon to be a major TV series too. North Devon is enjoying a rare hot summer with tourists flocking to its coastline. Detective Matthew Venn is called out to a rural crime scene at the home of a group of artists. What he finds is an...