Crow Moon: The atmospheric, chilling debut thriller that everyone is talking about

Our summary description

As Independent Scottish booksellers, we write all of our descriptions personally, we hope you enjoy this one.

Martha Strangeways has been living in suspension since the fire that killed her young twins and ended her career as an investigative reporter. Purpose has narrowed to endurance. Then, in a remote stretch of countryside, she finds the body of a missing teenage boy, marked with a poem inked into his skin. Grief sharpens into attention. Habit returns.

When another teenager disappears, Martha is pulled back toward the work she once believed she had left behind. Alongside a local detective, she begins to follow a trail shaped as much by rumour as evidence. The landscape closes in, isolated and watchful, and the community’s unease begins to curdle into something darker.

Crow Moon is steeped in atmosphere, drawing on folklore, paranoia, and the psychology of loss. As suspicion spreads and meanings are imposed where none are certain, the novel asks what people reach for when fear demands explanation. Martha’s search is not only for the truth behind the crimes, but for a way to live with what cannot be repaired. Some losses leave silence. Others call us back into the world, whether we are ready or not.