Conville & Walsh

Sylvia Fallon, the feminist critic, has stirred up controversy with a book on date rape and needs to escape. So when she is commissioned to write the biography of cult author Alfred Vernon, she is thrilled to find it comes with the keys to his home, Woodside, a remote house in south west England.

Once there she becomes intrigued by Vernon’s obsession with the Green Man, an ancient English folk symbol. There are more faces of the Green Man in English churches than there are images of Christ, yet no-one has ever known what he represents.

Locals in the isolated Cornish community don’t want to talk about Vernon. But her research becomes more chilling when it emerges that a series of girls have gone missing in the area. As she probes further the enigma of the Green Man, Sylvia discovers a secret which has lain at the heart of the English church for 600 years. What she doesn’t realise is that it also contains a deadly threat to herself.

Gripping and atmospheric, THE GLADE delves into dark rituals and beliefs which have been long been hidden in the shadows of English history.