You Sent Me a Letter

On the morning of Sophie's fortieth birthday, an intruder walks into her bedroom, hands her a letter, and gives her one instruction: open it at eight o'clock that evening, in front of everyone gathered at her party. If she doesn't — or if she goes to the police — the people she loves will pay for it. Then he leaves, and she is expected to carry on with her day as though nothing has happened.

What follows is a single day spent trying to work out who sent the letter, what it says, and which of her own buried secrets it is about to expose. Sophie has more than one, and as the hours close in it becomes clear she is not the only person in the room with something to hide.

Lucy Dawson builds the novel as a countdown to eight p.m., in which an ordinary birthday party turns into the moment several lives are permanently rearranged.