Joanne Harris is the author of the international bestsellers CHOCOLAT (also a major film starring Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Alfred Molina, Lena Olin and Johnny Depp), BLACKBERRY WINE, FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE, COASTLINERS, and, with Fran Warde, THE FRENCH KITCHEN: A COOKBOOK. She lives in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, with her husband and daughter.

Jay Mackintosh is trapped by memory in the old familiar landscape of his childhood, to which he longs to return. A bottle of home-brewed wine left to him by a long-vanished friend seems to provide the key to an old mystery. As the unusual properties of the strange brew take effect, Jay escapes to a derelict farmhouse in the French village of Lansquenet. There, a ghost from the past waits to confront him, and the reclusive Marise - haunted, lovely and dangerous - hides a terrible secret behind her closed shutters. Between them, a mysterious chemistry. Or could it be magic?