That evening the baker's wife ran down the village street in a tattered pink nightgown. She screamed as she ran.

Strange things are afoot in the English village where the Willoweed family live. First, the river floods in June. The family wakes to find ducks sailing around the drawing room and dead peacocks bobbing in the garden. But the flood is only the beginning of their troubles.

All of a sudden the miller goes mad and drowns himself. Then the butcher slits his throat. A peculiar illness is spreading through the town and picking off its victims one by one.

From the Willoweed cottage, sisters Emma and Hattie watch the tragedy unfold. They have grown up in the village, cared for by their meek father and bullied by their grandmother with her enormous ear trumpet. The wild and mysterious countryside is the only world they have ever known. But as the virus spreads and hysteria grips everyone around them, they realise their lives are about to change forever.

A twisted pandemic parable and a tragicomic gem.

Barbara Comyns (1909–1992) was born in England and raised in the care of governesses who allowed her and her siblings to run wild. She began writing and illustrating her work when she was a girl and in her teens, attended art school. She then married a painter and had two children. To support her family, she dealt in antiques and vintage cars, renovated apartments, and bred poodles. She later lived in Spain and died in 1992, leaving two children, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and eleven books.