"The girls at her new boarding school are just as Maureen feared: cruel and cliquish. But there's also something weird about them, something sinister. Why do they slip away in the middle of the night to visit the woods surrounding the school? What's their secret society, called the Seven Magpies, about?" The author leaves open the question of the influence of the stones for good or evil, and the story works very well indeed as a boarding school tale about a sensitive new girl sent to boarding school, away from the east coast of Scotland, when her parents join the armed forces for "the Duration". ( )