'Hair-raising vision … The pulse quickens, the spine chills, the stomach turns.' Weekend Australian Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then, in his orchard, Murray Jaccob sees a shadow move between the trees. Across the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. On the verandah of the Stubbses' house, a dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. Nothing will ever be the same again, not least for Maurice Stubbs, left to recount the day that had been waiting for him all his life . . . 'Winton at his most disciplined, most distilled … An unforgettable story, told with the simplicity that only a consummate artist can achieve.' Sun Herald 'A brooding story … tense and intense, at once a suspense thriller and a moral fable of a creature flung up from the deepest recesses of the mind … Like black glass, the novel throws back reflections of our own image.' The Age