For dreamer Clare, a chance encounter with old family acquaintance Marcus brings up haunting memories of a childhood holiday, as she and Marcus try to come to terms with the tragedy and the magic that has shaped their lives.They meet by chance in a department store. But they've met before. They last saw each other when Clare was a child, during a summer in Guernsey marred by an accident. He lost his son in inexplicable circumstances. She was his son's friend and the last person to see him alive.The novel flits backwards and forwards in time, between the present day affair between Marcus and Clare, fuelled by grief and loneliness; and the summer a young boy, Tom, went missing, a summer filled with sunshine and magic, moving inexorably towards tragedy.The Magic Places is a spellbinding tale of the power of stories and imagination.