The Familiar Dark
The must-read, utterly gripping thriller you won't be able to put down
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- €3.99
Publisher Description
'A high quality, sharply written thriller whose motley cast of deviants and misfits delivers some breathtaking twists on the way to a bleak but very satisfying conclusion. This is the reality of motherhood - red in tooth and claw' Sarah J Naughton, bestselling author of The Festival
'An achingly raw, emotional story that was beautifully written. From the heartbreaking beginning to the shocking conclusion, it was a journey so powerful that it'll stay with me for a long time to come' Alice Hunter, bestselling author of The Serial Killer's Wife
'Raw, powerful, beautiful - devastatingly good' TM Logan, bestselling author of The Holiday
'Beautiful and harrowing and everything in between' Chris Whitaker, award-winning author of We Begin at the End
Sometimes it's better not to ask questions. Sometimes it's better not to know.
Eve Taggert's life has been spent steadily climbing away from her roots. Her mother, a hard and cruel woman who dragged her up in a rundown trailer park, was not who she wanted to be to her own daughter, Junie.
But 12-year old Junie is now dead. Found next to the body of her best friend in the park of their small, broken town. Eve has nothing left but who she used to be.
Despite the corrupt police force that patrol her dirt-poor town deep in the Missouri Ozarks, Eve is going to find what happened to her daughter. Even if it means using her own mother's cruel brand of strength to unearth secrets that don't want to be discovered and face truths it might be better not to know.
Everyone is a suspect.
Everyone has something to hide.
And someone will answer for her daughter's murder.
From the bestselling author of The Roanoke Girls, The Familiar Dark is a spellbinding story about the bonds of family as well as a story about how even the darkest and most terrifying of places can provide the comfort of home. The Familiar Dark will blow you away.
PRAISE FOR THE FAMILIAR DARK
'Dark and beautifully written. Spellbinding' Catherine Steadman, bestselling author of Something in the Water
'Absolutely bloody brilliant. It's so well-written I felt like I was living her pain' Fiona Cummins, award-winning author of The Neighbour
'Dark, moving, intriguing. Truly inspiring' Susan Lewis, bestselling author of One Minute Later
'Powerful, gripping, heart-stopping' Laura McHugh, award-winning author of The Wolf Wants In
'From its gripping beginning to its sobering finale, Amy Engel's The Familiar Dark never fails to enthral with surprising twists' Daily Mail
'This is fierce and brilliant' The Observer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The stark prologue of this harrowing thriller from Engel (The Roanoke Girls) recounts the final moments of 12-year-old best friends Izzy Logan and Junie Taggert, slaughtered on an abandoned playground in their impoverished hometown in the Missouri Ozarks. Junie's single mom, Eve, a feisty, funny, sometimes foulmouthed diner waitress, is shattered by the news, but she swiftly becomes enraged by what she sees as a less than vigorous probe by the local police, including her idolized older brother, Cal, who she suspects may be writing off the murders as collateral damage from the meth ring run by their own abusive, long-estranged pit bull of a mother. Feeling she has nothing left to lose, a vengeance-bent Eve ignores Cal's warnings to leave investigating to the professionals and begins asking questions of dangerous people with plenty to hide. Without sacrificing any of the narrative's ferocious urgency, Engel gradually discloses a few of Eve's own guilty secrets on the way to some gut-wrenching final revelations. This rural noir stakes Engel's claim to that dystopian terrain somewhere between Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone.
