Mantrap Mountain

Deep beneath the Pyrenean mountains is a long-forgotten community ruled by women. No child has been born in this beleaguered subterranean world for almost five hundred years, and the inhabitants are made up solely of tourists, walkers and mountaineers who have been unlucky enough to stray too far into its labyrinthine caves. Women control this idealised female world, where men are mercilessly subjugated, part castrated and fed with stature-diminishing fungi to form an underclass of dwarf-sized servants.

Into this ?Queendom? come new inhabitants: two English cyclists, Hazel and Terry, on the verge of a difficult first romance. Both are alarmed to discover the extent to which their lives have changed as they prepare to assume their new roles. Hazel is even more surprised to discover she is pregnant, and her future child, it seems, may hold the key to renewing this strange and troubled world.

A senior detective finds himself saddled with the job of finding people missing in the caves. He may have unorthodox methods, but will he be able to unlock the secret of the unique but potentially lethal cave system?