Disowned by her family and deranged by anger, Jennifer Enzo views the world as a demonic garden, a film script and a list of names to be assassinated. But when she finds her own name on the list she is forced out of her insular world to counter a sinister threat to her life.
Professor Virginia Bruck's world is divided between her research in artificial intelligence and posing for her husband, the eccentric German artist Earnst Bruck. Suspected of being the source of a destructive rumour she decides to do what her semi-aristocratic family have never done throughout centuries of rumour, and fight back.
Frieda Schoenhofer, a self-made millionaire, is determined to explain the death of a local witch. Police are equally determined to explain a baffling double murder and Frieda becomes their first suspect after the body of a man is found hung above the north door of Bamberg Cathedral.
All three women share a common association: the Malandanti, a four hundred year old network of covens on the brink of collapse following rumours of a plot to kill the leading members. As the conflict intensifies and the familiar world disappears, they will be forced to reassess their own ambitions, confront the nature of guilt and innocence, and question how their beliefs explain the supernatural forces they each control.