A spellbinding, major new novel from one of Britain's finest young writers. A taut, suspenseful tale of an unexpected arrival at a Spanish convent and the intrigue that ensues among the order.Those whom God wishes to destroy he first makes mad...The crumbling convent of Our Lady of Mercy stands alone in an uninhabited part of the Spanish sierra, hidden on a hill among dense pine forest. Its inhabitants are devoted to God, to solitude and silence; six women cut off from the world they've chosen to leave behind.This is all to change, on the day that Mother Superior Maria Ines discovers a suitcase punctured with air-holes at the entrance to the retreat. Soon she is to find the box and its contents are to have consequences beyond her imagining, and that even in her carefully protected sanctuary she is unable to keep the world, or her past, at bay.The Convent is storytelling at its very best: enthralling, highly readable and wonderfully atmospheric.From the Hardcover edition.