1786, Jerusalem College, Cambridge. The ghost of Sylvia Whichcote is rumored to be haunting Jerusalem, since disturbed fellow-commoner, Frank Oldershaw, claims to have seen the dead woman prowling the grounds.
Desperate to salvage her son's reputation, Lady Anne Oldershaw employs John Holdsworth, author of The Anatomy of Ghosts, a stinging account of why ghosts are mere delusion to investigate. But his arrival in Cambridge disrupts an uneasy status quo as he glimpses a world of privilege and abuse.
And when Holdsworth finds himself haunted not only by the ghost of his dead wife, Maria, but also Elinor—the very-much-alive Master's wife—his fate is sealed.
Andrew Taylor is a British author best known for his crime novels, which include the Dougal series, the Lydmouth series, the Roth trilogy, and the historical novel The American Boy. He has won the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger Award twice.
John Telfer, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor best known for playing the character of Willy Pettit in five seasons of Bergerac. He has appeared many times in various television dramas, while his parallel theatrical career has involved him in leading roles at the Bristol Old Vic, the Royal National Theatre, the Old Vic in London, and many regional theaters. He has made hundreds of radio broadcasts, and he plays the part of Alan, the vicar, in The Archers.