The children

As always, Leary makes dysfunction, pathology and even tragedy completely compelling. - The Huffington PostCharlotte Maynard rarely leaves her mother's home; the sprawling Connecticut lake house that belonged to her late stepfather, Whit Whitman, and the generations of Whitmans before him.

While Charlotte and her sister grew up at Lakeside, their stepbrothers, Spin and Perry, were welcomed as weekend guests.

But now the grown boys own the estate, which Charlotte's mother occupies by their grace.

When Spin, the youngest and favourite of all the children, brings his fiancé home for the summer, she breathes new life into their rarefied world.

But as the wedding draws near, and flaws surface in the family's polite veneer, an array of simmering resentments and unfortunate truths are exposed, with devastating consequences.