Watch Me Disappear

* 'Slow-burning, spine-crawling...It is a compelling, haunting and intelligent read.' - Amanda Craig, Daily Telegraph * 'Clever, compelling and impressive' - Angela Cooke Daily Express * 'The flavour of the 1970s is so accurate you can taste it...An unusually skilful and haunting novel' - Sam Phipps, Sunday Herald * 'An outstanding novel... An intense, intelligent and compelling book that readers will find impossible to forget.' - Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail * 'A chilling and sharply articulated exploration of memories, identity and family relationships' - Anna Millar, Scotland on Sunday

Tina Humber is 40 and living in the States when a moment of panic about her 10 year-old daughter triggers the memory of her childhood friend, Mandy Baker, who went missing at the same age from the sleepy Cambridgeshire village where they grew up. As Tina replays events and the past comes back to life, she begins to suspect the awful truth of what happened to Mandy. But after so many years, will anyone believe what is based on nothing more than conjecture, intuition and fragments of memory? And even if she is able to placate the ghost of Mandy Baker, there will be profound consequences for the living, including herself. Set against the backdrop of the waterlogged Fens, Jill Dawson's powerful new novel captures the mysteries of childhood, and that volatile transitional stage when girls become aware of their attractions -- but do not grasp the dangers.

Jill Dawson is the author of TRICK OF THE LIGHT, MAGPIE, FRED AND EDIE, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize, and WILD BOY, all published by Sceptre to critical acclaim. WATCH ME DISAPPEAR, her latest novel, will be published by Sceptre in March 2006. She is also an award-winning poet and has edited several anthologies including The Virago Book of Wicked Verse, and, with Margo Daly, Wild Ways. She was the British Council Fellow at Amherst College, Massachusetts, in 1997 and is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow in Writing at the University of East Anglia. Born in Durham, she now lives with her family in the Fens.