Eleven Hours
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- 27,99 zł
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- 27,99 zł
Publisher Description
A compelling, heartrending tale of a woman in danger and the man who’s desperate to find her, from the internationally bestselling author of TULLY and ROAD TO PARADISE
A heavily pregnant young woman is leaving the shopping mall to head home on a horribly hot day in Texas. Her normal life of shopping, husband, children, with the extra excitement of the imminent baby, stretches before her.
And then she is bundled into a car and kidnapped by a desperate young man.
What does he want? Where are they going?
In scenes that alternate between the desperate husband, pursuing by car, the alarmingly laid-back FBI agent tracing her by helicopter – who may or may not be as good as he thinks at rescuing hostages – and the increasingly threatened wife, Eleven Hours is a tour de force of storytelling power.
Reviews
Praise for Paullina Simons
Tully
‘Pick up this book and prepare to have your emotions wrung so completely you’ll be sobbing your heart out one minute and laughing through your tears the next… Read it and weep – literally’ Company
Tatiana and Alexander
'This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented and dashing hero, a heart-stopping love affair … It also has – thank goodness – a welcome sense of humour and discernible characters rather than ciphers.'
Victoria Moore, Daily Mail
About the author
Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad in 1963. As a child she emigrated to Queens, New York, and attended colleges in Long Island. Then she moved to England and attended Essex University, before returning to America. She lives in New York with her husband and children.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Continuing to hone her style, Simons follows the logorrheic Tully and the pensive Red Leaves with a sparely written, blatantly shocking page-turner. Nine months pregnant with her third child, Desdemona (Didi) Wood basks in the adoration of her husband, Rich, national sales manager for a Dallas-based religious publisher. Didi's only sin is that she's a compulsive shopper, blowing her husband's hard-earned cash at a Dallas mall. A nondescript young man approaches Didi inside the mall, then follows her and forces her into his Ford minivan. Terrified, Didi wonders if God is punishing her for not going to church often enough or for being a shopaholic. She soon learns that the kidnapper, Lyle Luft, is enraged at God for allowing his wife and child to die. He wants a baby, and he doesn't care how he gets it. Rich deduces that his missing wife was abducted in the mall parking lot, but police are skeptical until tough black FBI officer Scott Somerville joins the chase. Simons's pacing is pulse-racing as she cuts from the pursuers to the pursued with nightmarish speed, evoking with economy and style Didi's terror, pain and sheer physical discomfort. As the road chase continues, news bulletins about Didi's abduction prompt Lyle into homicidal fury. Once he kills a cop, he has nothing left to lose. Meanwhile, Didi tries to persuade Lyle that he's "acting against God," but it's not surprising that her sermon falls on deaf ears. Despite the blatant overlay of born-again religiosity, the momentum of the chase sustains the narrative, and Simons renders some final stomach-churning scenes of violence with unsparing detail. While the psychological explanation of Lyle's sociopathy is superficial, and Didi's transformation from suburban housewife to tough and cool avenger is less than plausible, the atmosphere of panic never abates until Simons brings her suspenseful tale to a close. Mystery Guild selection; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; author tour.