The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle (published in United States as The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle) is a novel by Stuart Turton which won the Best First Novel prize in the 2018 Costa Book Awards and reached number one on The Saturday Times Bestseller list [1][2][3] and number five on The Sunday Times Bestseller list.

[6] At the start of the book, a man awakes in a forest, suffering from memory loss, and calling for someone named Anna.

If he is unable to solve the mystery in the eight allocated days, the process will restart and he will awake again in the body of Sebastian Bell with his memory wiped.

It is not explained how the protagonist can pass from one incarnation to another: it is said that the reconstruction of the mansion and of the Hardcastle crimes are a sort of virtual prison where the perpetrators of very serious crimes are imprisoned, but that the protagonist ended up there of his own free will for a precise reason (which he will have to discover, since his memory becomes weaker every time it overlaps with that of the characters whose personalities he takes possession of).

The person who solves the riddle of his or her prison will be granted freedom; the other two competitors will have their memories erased and repeat the same day in a loop.

[13] Val McDermid selected Stuart Turton, author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, to appear on her prestigious New Blood panel at the Theakstons Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival.