Comet weather - liz williams

A contemporary tale of four fey sisters.

Bee: the practical one, the lynchpin; still living in the family home of Mooncote in Somerset, where she has met an unconventional boyfriend that not even her sisters are aware of.

Stella: a DJ among other things.

Currently hanging around the Med after completing a series of gigs in Ibiza, she has vowed never to return to Mooncote following a row with Bee, but that was then.

Serena: a single mother and fashion designer living in Notting Hill, increasingly uncertain of her relationship with long-term boyfriend Ben, a Camden-based rock singer and the son of a family friend.

Luna: the youngest, head-strong and free-spirited, a wanderer living out of a horse-drawn van while she follows the Gypsy Switch: the route of horse fairs that spans the length of the country.

The Fallow sisters, scattered like the four winds but now drawn back together, with the comet due, united in their desire to find their mother, Alys - a former Vogue cover model who disappeared a year ago without warning or explanation.

They have help, of course, from the star spirits and the no-longer-living, but such advice tends to be cryptic and is hardly the most dependable of guides.

How is the comet connected to all this, and what of the huge cloaked intruder, stinking of blood and earth, who surprises Stella one night while shes home alone? The sisters soon come to realise that their mothers disappearance may be part of something far bigger and much darker than they had ever suspected.