A cassocked monk stands on a mountaintop. Arms outstretched, he forms a tau, the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet. Having escaped from within a cloistered Vatican-like chuch city compound called the Citadel, carved out of a mountain near the fictional Turkish city of Ruin, the escaped monk attracts media attention as he deliberately throws himself off the mountain. Brother Samuel, the escaped monk, knew a secret…a secret the monks of the Citadel have been protecting for thousands of years.

Before I Go to Sleep is SJ Watson's first novel, a thriller in the mold of Christopher Nolan's film on the impermanence of memory, Memento.  The novel's heroine and storyteller, Chrissie, awakes in a strange bed, with a strange man sleeping beside her.  A look in the bathroom mirror reveals a woman some 20 years older than she last remembers.  Who is she, and how did she get here?