The ticking clock

The house Constance Dale inherits is an enormous Victorian creation in Westchester County. When she arrives from the West Coast to try to dispose of it, it has been deserted for months. Or so she thinks. But little things soon prove her wrong: The grandfather clock ticks busily. Lights go on in a theoretically empty room. A cry sounds faintly in the night. And to increase her unease, a neighbor-who would be attractive if he weren't so suspicious (in both senses of the word) — keeps turning up at odd moments. One little out-of-place circumstance after another leads Constance to an unfamiliar part of the house and a room where a stolen child has been hidden. Then her struggle begins, a struggle to save herself and the child, a fight for life that sends her racing through the old house and into the unfamiliar countryside, and catapults her into greater danger than before. In this crisp, fast-paced story, the excitement of distinguishing friend from enemy and hunter from hunted keeps the reader absorbed until the nerve-tingling conclusion.