'A book with special and dangerous properties' Hilary Mantel, bestselling author of Wolf Hall'Enthralling' M.R.Carey, bestselling author of The Girl With All the Gifts 'An imaginative tour de force' The Times1558: Twelve children, gifted far beyond their years, are banished by their Tudor queen to the town of Rotherweird.Some say they are the golden generation; some say the devil's spawn.But everyone knows they are something to be revered - and feared. Four and a half centuries on, cast adrift from the rest of England by Elizabeth I and still bound by its ancient laws, Rotherweird's independence is subject to one disturbing condition: nobody, but nobody, studies the town or its history. Then an Outsider arrives, a man of unparallelled wealth and power, enough to buy the whole of Rotherweird - deeply buried secrets and all . . . Welcome to Rotherweird. 'A remarkable achievement' Sunday Independent 'Compelling' Guardian