Nights in White Satin

"Powerful emotional intensity . . . The book hits you where you live," raved the Washington Post Book World about Michelle Spring's Standing in the Shadows. The Los Angeles Times hailed it as "[a] suspenseful thriller . . . truly startling." Now Michelle Spring returns with a psychologically astute novel that unfolds against the stately backdrop of Cambridge, England.

But behind this refined university setting lies something truly sinister.

For private investigator Laura Principal, the case begins unexpectedly at the annual May Ball, a jubilant celebration marking the end of examinations, an avalanche of food and fountains of champagne. Laura is hired to provide security, but somewhere between the dancing and the fireworks, a student disappears.

Katie Arkwright wore white. Sleek, elegant, in silver armlets, she was a vision of purity. But when Laura starts probing into the missing woman's life, she finds that Katie concealed a dark side. With this jarring revelation, Laura opens a floodgate of damning secrets and double lives--encompassing a college don's mysterious death and the discovery of the skeletal remains of a baby.

The deeper Laura searches into a tangled past, the more tension mounts in every corner of Cambridge--where someone waits, coiled to strike. And strike again.

Enigmatic characters, shameful acts. Hidden motives as passionate as they are malignant. A conspiracy of silence that shields an unspeakable truth. In Nights in White Satin, Michelle Spring penetrates the complex impulses that can seize desperate souls--and once again creates an incisive novel of psychological suspense.

Michelle Spring grew up in Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, later moving to Cambridge, England, where she currently lives with her husband and two young children. Under the name Michelle Stanworth, she has had an academic career that spans two and a half decades, four academic books, an affiliated lectureship at Cambridge University, and, most recently, the Professorship of Sociology at Anglia University in Cambridge. Her first novel, Every Breath You Take, was nominated for both an Anthony Award and an Arthur Ellis Award as Best First Novel. She is also the author of Running for Shelter and Standing in the Shadows.