Title: The Girl From Convict Lake
Author: Sharon Shipley
Genre: Psychological/ Suspense/Whodunit
Book Blurb:
Young spoiled heirs to an automotive fortune joyride a priceless prototype, while D.U.I., which ended in a spectacular fireball.
Meggie now has a limp and scars that she obsesses over as worse than they are. When she inherits the last asset, a decrepit Victorian lake house and incidentally a dumping ground for a serial killer, she impulsively speeds to the isolated spot without telling anyone, neither a diner-owner, a female deputy, or good old boy forest ranger, all warning her of the 'Blizzard of the Century' and young women that had gone missing in the inhospitable area of dense federal forests and bottomless lakes…
When kissing-cousin Zak and her aggravating brother Lance show up, each following the money, three desperate people end up playing 'cat and killer' games in Michigan's harsh, unforgiving Upper Peninsula, while battling lust, starvation, and the serial murderer among them, in the isolated snowbound lake house until only two are left standing...for now.
Excerpt:
The pretty girl threaded her way through a jungle of struts, under the gray metal bleachers, unsavory even on the sunniest day. Yet now, the insalubrious space was cold and drear with the flotsam of many seasons…candy wrappers, old condoms, rusty soda cans—the odd shoe.
A lame place to meet, she moped. Pursing candy pink lips, she looked dubiously up through the open steel treads to slices of an overcast sky, seemingly another world away, feeling trapped of a sudden, as if the risers were bars to a cage.
Where the heck was he?
Sulking, she fingered her heart locket. The note said: 'Under the bleachers'. “Meet me under the freaking bleachers!” South side? South side toward the hot dog stand? Her mind nagged. Farthest away from the school. Down by the trash bins, behind the cement enclosure. Where no one can see us…
She hoped it was that cute Zak, feeling first doubt. Didn't say, did it? Might be that creep, Rodney sitting and farting behind her in homeroom. She hugged her pink cashmere-ed arms. Shoulda worn a coat, sexiness be diddly-damned. Startin' to snow too.
Then she saw the thing.
Round. Glossy blood-red and startling white against gray filtered light. She stepped closer, bemused, not freaked out. A target? A freaking bull's-eye target! Lame place to shoot arrows or whatever under bleachers with all these beams and crap.
The pretty girl…perennial cheerleader, prom queen, first pick for the school play, stumbled over crisscross struts to examine it. Then heard the voice, turning with a smile curving glossy pink lips, her back flat against the red and white target. Now she was the eye of the target. Her first instinct, when the arrow thumped her chest with the force of a pile driver, piercing the delicate barrier of pink wool, then her skin with ease, scraping off sternum bones and into her heart, was…all that blood will ruin my sweater.
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Review:
It is a great book to find yourself fortunate to be inside curled up cozy in your favorite chair with a cup of cocoa and a cat, while outside a blizzard is raging and trying to get in.
Giveaway –
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Open Internationally.
Runs August 8 – August 21, 2023.
Winner will be drawn on August 22, 2023.
Author Biography:
I love penning novels and scripts in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina…and visit far too many 'All You Can Eat' crab' shacks…