This New York Times bestseller is an arresting psychological thriller in which two U.S. Marshals hunting for an escaped mental patient unveil a nightmare world of CIA drug trials, Nazi inspired eugenic work, and repressive mind control.

In the year 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate an unexplained disappearance. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this barren island, despite having been kept under constant surveillance in a locked, guarded cell. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on the island, hints of radical experimentation and covert government machinations add darker, more sinister shades to an already bizarre case. Because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems...

Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island for the truth. Pray for him.

In 1954, US Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule have arrived at Ashcliffe Hospital, a Federal Mental Institution for the Criminally Insane on a small island in Massachusetts' Outer Harbor. They have come to find an escaped patient, Rachel Solando, who has left behind a series of encoded clues. The more they investigate, the more they believe that Rachel has summoned them there, hoping to shed light on Ashcliffe's history as an "experimental" institution, during the watershed years when psychiatry hovered uneasily between its history of psycho-surgery and barbaric physical abuse and it's future of pharmaceutical experimentation. As a storm approaches, Teddy and Chuck find that they may have stumbled into a nightmare world of CIA drug trials, eugenics work inspired by the Nazis, and repressive mind control in the middle of the Red Scare. And the more they learn, the more they fear someone is trying to drive them insane.