Baby-Snatcher. Ann Cleeves. 2025.

Marilyn Howes and her mother Kathleen are an inseparable duo.

That is, until one night when Kathleen doesn't come home...

Fifteen-year-old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay's doorstep, so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. But in the Howes' dark and cluttered kitchen, they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, although acting rather mysteriously.

Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the strange incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor- until he receives news that Mrs Howes has disappeared once more. And, for the second time, he is drawn into the strange relationships of the families living on the lonely Headland.

Then a woman's body washes up on the beach...