Guardian

Informationen zum Autor John Saul ’s first novel,  Suffer the Children , was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include  Perfect Nightmare , Black Creek Crossing , and  The Presence. He is also the author of the  New York Times  bestselling serial thriller  The Blackstone Chronicles , initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle and Hawaii. Klappentext "All the right scares in all the right places." The Seattle Times A telephone rings in the dead of night with shocking news for single mother MaryAnne Carpenter: her friends the Wilkensons are suddenly, inexplicably dead, their only child, Joey, a sad and silent adolescent and MaryAnne's godchild, abruptly orphaned. But as MaryAnne rushes with her family to the Wilkenson's ranch to embrace her young charge, disturbing questions mount. Was it an accident that killed her friends? Or murder? Now, as winter transforms the ranch into a place of blinding, dangerous storms, a series of horrific murders, killings that suggest a raging animal and defy solution by the local police, draw ever closer to MaryAnne and her young family.CHAPTER 1    It was just the kind of day that never failed to depress her, even when she woke up feeling good. Today, the sense of impending disaster—the vague feeling of panic that had seized her when she first woke up—only worsened as the temperature skyrocketed and the hot, wet air closed around her like a straitjacket.   August in Canaan, New Jersey. Temperature, 93 degrees, humidity, 97 percent, and both climbing.   Canaan, New Jersey, where there were only two decent weeks a year—one in the spring and the other in the fall—and the rest of the time it was either too hot and muggy or too soul-numbing cold.   Canaan, where MaryAnne Carpenter had been born, and where she’d grown up, and where she’d gotten married, and where she’d had her children, and where, she thought wryly, it was beginning to look as if she was going to die.   If she wasn’t dead already—which, this morning, seemed a definite possibility. And maybe not such a bad possibility, she reflected as she sipped at the coffee that had grown cold in the chipped mug. Except that if she was dead, then that meant she was now in Heaven and was due to spend eternity in a shabby two-bedroom house surrounded by a scraggly strip of brownish lawn, with a backyard just large enough to hold a rusting barbecue, some stained plastic lawn furniture, and a creaking swing set that neither of her kids had used for at least two years.   Obviously, if she was dead, this wasn’t Heaven and she must have sinned a lot more than she realized.   The back door slammed open, and her daughter’s voice cut through her brooding thoughts. “Isn’t Dad here yet?”   MaryAnne stifled the tart response that rose in her throat, determined not to let her anger and mistrust toward the man she’d married contaminate Alison’s relationship with her father. “He said noon, but you know your father,” she said evenly. “If he’s an hour late, we count him as on time, right?”   Alison unconsciously twisted a lock of her dark brown hair around her forefinger, a habit MaryAnne had first noticed almost the day after she and Alan had separated. Alison glanced at the clock, then flopped into the chair opposite her mother. “So he won’t be here for another forty-five minutes.” The girl sighed. “Just like I told Logan.” She began picking at the curling edge of the Formica-topped kitchen table. “Mom? Can I ask you something?”   The fact that Alison’s eyes didn’t meet hers warned MaryAnne that whatever the question was, she wasn’t going to like it. But since Alison’s thirteenth birthday last month she’d grown used to fielding questions she didn’t quite feel comfortable about answering, so now she ...

Produktdetails

• Autoren: John Saul
• Verlag: Fawcett Book Group
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Taschenbuch
• Erschienen: 02.07.1994
• EAN: 9780449223048
• ISBN: 978-0-449-22304-8
• Seiten: 384
• Abmessung: 110 mm x 180 mm x 28 mm
• Thema: Belletristik > Spannung > Krimis, Thriller, Spionage