The Witch's Cradle, Gillian White

From the author of The Sleeper, an electrifying novel that lays bare the horrors which can arise from the manipulation of the media.

They only wanted to be TV stars…until their three small children disappeared.

Desperately poor, Barry, Cheryl and their three children are possibly the most famous family in Britain, after the Royal family. Their fame has come, not from wealth or success or glamour, but from the attentions of a television company who made them the subject of a fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Cheryl was prepared to do anything to be a media star and believed the public loved her – and, indeed, for a while it seemed the nation had taken this simple, gutsy, poverty-stricken couple to its heart. But then everything goes horribly wrong. Cheryl has a third baby – and is transformed in the public’s eyes from a plucky but unlucky go-getter to a profligate welfare mom. Then, mysteriously, her three children go missing. Have they been abducted? Murdered? Or is there an even more sinister explanation for their disappearance?

From the Paperback edition.