A disparate group of people find themselves bound together in a surreal and dangerous world, tasked with solving a riddle to find an unknown object which will be their salvation. 

Outlines of several once-busy cities shimmer on the horizon. In the distance a group of people – a family – walk towards us.To survive in this alien world of shifting sand, they must find a hidden object. But they aren’t the only ones in the wilderness searching for it.

Meanwhile, McKenzie Strathie is pretty sure she is an ordinary teenager living an ordinary life in Arizona – except that the previous night she found a sand-lizard in her bed, and now she’s beginning to question everything around her.

“Theo Clare has created an intensely visual universe which pulls you in to such an extent that it’s as if you are one of the characters struggling to survive in a terrain of shifting sands, and where to be outside in the dark on a so-called ‘grey’ night is to invite instant death. Whether writing dark, challenging, but oh-so-gripping crime as Mo Hayder, or creating the deceptive world of The Book of Sand, she holds you in her hands as the action unfolds around you. I am super-excited to be publishing her again, and cannot recommend her new novels highly enough.” – Selina Walker, Publisher