Recently widowed, Nina Franklin buys the charming little cottage known as The Toll House in order to be closer to her beloved grandson. But she doesn't admit she's lived in Ashkeepers village before - and has memories of it that are too disturbing to share. When she finds an ancient leather-bound volume in the garden shed, she settles down to read The History of the Village of Ashkeepers by Montague George Barnacle and finds within its pages a story of treachery and betrayal that has unsettling echoes of her own ...