A gothic tale in two timelines in which the lives of two women intersect through a series of mysterious, eerily beautiful photographs of the dead London, 1865. Minnie has been sent to Culpepper House to work as a maid. She's been told that the Culpepper twins are odd, and odd they are. Edmund and Edith seem to do as they please, with Edmund running a laboratory from the house and Edith running about with glass plates in order to create photographs. When Minnie spies what Edith is photographing--a young woman and swan, both dead--she is horrified. But with nowhere else to go, there is nothing to do but remain and try to unlock the mystery of Culpepper House's secrets before she becomes the victim of such a photograph.
London, present day. When Sydney-based artist Hadley is involved in an art world scandal revolving around an album of exquisite Victorian death photographs, she's met with a flurry of media attention and the offer to create an installation centering on a heartbreaking image of a young woman and a swan. Then comes a shocking offer from the enigmatic Kit Culpepper of the Culpepper Trust...an eye-watering sum of money, with the condition that Hadley sell him the album and never speak of its contents again. As Hadley digs deeper, she begins to suspect Kit Culpepper is guarding a deathly secret...and she's not entirely sure how far he'll go to keep it.
