Sanctuary

Sanctuary wins the award for the best French novel of 2019

Sandrine, who has recently moved to Normandy, receives a summons from a notary to collect the personal belongings of her deceased grandmother - a peculiar woman who lived alone on a tiny island off the coast and refused to see her daughter and granddaughter.

Sandrine steps off the boat on a grey, cold island and meets a handful of inhabitants, old people living in almost total isolation from civilization. Everyone describes her grandmother as a kind and gentle woman, a picture far removed from what Sandrine's mother told her about her. There is a strange atmosphere on the island.

It only takes a few hours for Sandrine to realize that the locals are hiding a secret. Something they're terrified of. So why don't any of them leave? What happened to the children of the holiday camp, hastily closed in 1949? Instead of answers, a young woman is found days later wandering the beach on the mainland with clothes soaked in blood that is not her own.

The novel won the Best French Novel of 2019 award at the annual Cognac Literary Festival of Detective Fiction.