Miranda Courtenay has seen better days. In the humiliating aftermath of a very public fall from grace as a lifestyle influencer, she has become accustomed to disappointing people. But when a distressing letter arrives from her twelve-year-old cousin asking for help, Miranda  is genuinely alarmed. For one thing, the return address is Barnsley House, the English family estate immortalized in her mother’s bestselling memoir, The House of Brides. For another, the letter is addressed to her mother, Tessa Summers, who has been dead for almost twenty years. 

Since her mother’s death, Miranda’s only connection to Barnsley House has been through Tessa’s famous book—a chronicle of the generations of women who married into the infamous Summer family. From Gertrude Summer, a famed crime novelist, to Miranda’s grandmother Beatrice, who killed herself after setting fire to Barnsley while her children slept, each woman in The House of Brides is more notorious than the last. The house’s current “bride” is the beautiful, effervescent Daphne, a celebrated celebrity chef whose success has saved Barnsley from ruin.

Miranda decides that a return to England might be an opportunity to escape the fallout at home, reconnect to her family, and possibly redeem herself in the process. But she arrives to a very different Barnsley House from the one portrayed in The House of Brides. The renowned hotel and restaurant are shuttered, and Daphne is nowhere to be found. Miranda is greeted by the forbidding housekeeper Mrs. Mins, and meets her aloof Uncle Max and his children, one of whom is in confined to a wheelchair after a mysterious accident. Not knowing who to trust, Miranda quickly realizes she must conceal her identity. And that she’s not the only one at Barnsley who is hiding something.