Perched high on a jagged cliffside, accessible only by a lethal mountain path above the crashing ocean, sits the grandest hotel of the 19th century. To the wealthy elite, it is paradise. To Elizabeth, it is a cage holding a terrible secret.

When her sister Anna vanishes from her job as a housemaid, leaving behind a forged farewell letter, Elizabeth goes undercover into the belly of the beast. Operating under a borrowed name, she begins a desperate search for the truth.

But her investigation is complicated by Dorian Ashvale, the hotel's magnetic owner. He is attentive, brilliant, and altogether too observant. As Elizabeth walks a wire between her growing passion for Dorian and her fierce loyalty to her sister, a web of clues begins to unravel. With the help of an unexpected ally in the estate's gardens, Elizabeth zeroes in on a horror hidden just out of sight.

In a hotel cut off from the rest of civilization, the truth won't just set her free-it might get her killed.