An isolated, luxury hotel high up in the Swiss Alps, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium where, years before patients were treated (not always terribly humanely), is the setting of The Sanatorium.

An uneasy atmosphere, an engagment party, a blizzard … and a missing fiancée. It appears someone is killing off guests, and his – or her – sadistic methods are similar to those used on the sanatorium patients years before.

One of the guest happens, fortunately, to also be a detective, but she’s got demons of her own to deal with.

Dark, sinister, creepy … Sarah Pearse’s debut novel is a gothic thriller that will scare the bejesus out of you. Penguin, available from Exclusive Books