Leaving a club at six o'clock in the morning, Annie Jones is caught up in an accident and knocked unconscious. When she comes round, she finds herself inexplicably 11years into the future. The location is still recognisably London, but it is a London where the river is no longer tidal, where biopiracy is rife and where immigrant refugees have colonised the Marsh Projects, a mosquito-infested ghetto south of the river beyond the Thames Barrier.

Annie is embraced by the Network, an environmental group that provides food, medical supplies and advice to the disadvantaged, and is led by the charismatic and maverick Kellen, to whom Annie is irresistibly drawn. She is also befriended by Leah, a scientist within the Network with a specialist knowledge of the river and its potential for destruction. Gradually, as she learns more about the world in which she finds herself, Annie comes to feel more at home in 2008 than in her superficial and selfish life before the accident. But Kellen's altruism is not genuine. When Annie realises the cost of his treachery, she is compelled to choose between her old self and her new. Crucifix Lane is the setting for the final, dramatic confrontation.

Kate Mosse has written a women's thriller that explores some of the most absorbing moral issues of our time. Steeped in the atmosphere of riverside London, it draws inspiration both from Celtic mysticism and from the use and abuse of developing technology in a gripping synthesis of past and future.