At 72 Chepstow Villas lives the Motley family: Leonard, the assistant manager of Whiteley's; his gentle wife, Gwen; "new woman" daughter, Madge; and son, Dicky. Into their comfortable Edwardian world comes a sinister threat of murder and a charismatic stranger who will change their lives forever.

Great-granddaughter to Charles Dickens, Monica (1915-1992) was born into an upper-middle-class family. Disillusioned with the world she was brought up in - she was expelled from St Paul's Girls' School in London for throwing her school uniform over Hammersmith Bridge - Dickens then decided to go into service, despite coming from the privileged class; her experiences as a cook and general servant would form the nucleus of her first book, One Pair Of Hands, in 1939. Dickens married an American Navy officer, Roy O. Stratton, and spent much of her adult life in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., but the majority of writing continued to be set in Britain. Her book of 1953, No More Meadows, reflected her work with the NSPCC and she later helped to found the American Samaritans in Massachusetts. Between 1970 and 1971 she wrote a series of children's books known as The World's End series which dealt with rescuing animals, and to some extent children. After the death of her husband, in 1985, Dickens returned to England where she continued to write until her death, aged 77.