An Iron Age reenactment trip unearths frightening behavior in this "slim, unnervingly tense novel...an instant classic" (Emma Donoghue, author of Room).
In the north of England, far from cities but not civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age. They have joined an anthropology course for the length of her father's vacation, fulfilling his lifelong obsession with simpler times. But as Silvie mixes with the students, she begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, and speaking her mind.

Then the group builds a ghost wall—a rude barricade built of stakes and ancestral skulls, once used to ward off enemy invaders—and Sylvie bears witness to other, equally revelatory behaviors. When you forge a spiritual connection to the past, what comes next but human sacrifice?

A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the "primitive minds" of our ancestors.

• For readers of Sarah Perry, Alyson Hagy, and Sophie Mackintosh