From the Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Women’s Prize Futures Award, the captivating, highly anticipated new novel, inspired by real historical figures and events.

In a quiet house in the countryside outside London, the finishing touches are being made to welcome a group of young women. The house and its location are top secret, its residents unknown to one another, but the girls have one thing in common: they are fallen. Offering refuge for prostitutes, petty thieves and the destitute, Urania Cottage is a second chance at life - but how badly do they want it?

Meanwhile, a few miles away in a Piccadilly mansion, millionairess Angela Burdett-Coutts, one of the benefactors of Urania Cottage, makes a discovery that leaves her cold: her stalker of 10 years has been released from prison. As the women’s worlds collide in ways they could never have expected, they will discover that freedom always comes at a price.

STACEY HALLS

One of the most exciting new novelists to emerge in recent years, Stacey Halls worked as a journalist before writing her debut The Familiars. A historical novel, set against the backdrop of industrial 17th-century Lancashire the novel was an instant favourite with Waterstones booksellers and went on to become the bestselling UK debut of 2019. Her second novel was 2020’s The Foundling, a story set around Georgian London’s Foundling Hospital.