It is a pleasure to welcome author Anna Willett to Books, Life and Everything today on the Blog Tour for her thriller, Small Town Nightmare. I have a great extract for you today to whet your appetite.
A young drifter is in deep trouble, his sister is his only
hope...
Lucy’s younger brother has gone missing. When she sets out
to find him, the trail takes her to Night Town. It’s a rural backwater deep in
the forests of south western Australia.
Lucy tries to enlist the help of the local police, but she
is met with hostility. She befriends a man who might help her cause. Yet he is
not quite who he says he is.
As the locals begin to resent her presence in the town,
danger quickly mounts. The town has secrets and they seem to centre on the
enigmatic Samuel Nightmesser, its wealthy benefactor.
What connects her missing brother to this grim boondock? And
why do the townsfolk want rid of Lucy?
As the story unfolds we are immersed in a creepy,
claustrophobic drama in which everything is at stake. If you like books with a
strong female lead that keep you on the edge of your seat, you’ve found your
next favourite read.
Extract
Chapter One
Despite the dip in temperature, the night skies were clear
and freckled with stars. Tim finished peeing and followed the light from his
phone back to the tent. Once inside, he rolled out his sleeping bag, smiling at
the ponies galloping across the nylon cover. The one-man tent and girl’s
sleeping bag were a bargain at eighteen dollars and worth their weight in gold
on cold nights. He’d also gone crazy and bought a battered copy of How it Works
– Volume 5 for fifty cents. It was the one book in the series he’d never read,
so the probability of coming across a copy at a small town garage sale was
somewhere in the range of eight thousand to one. Maths aside, Tim took the find
as a good omen, not that he believed in such things. Still, spotting the
out-of-date manual on a table littered with porcelain dog statues and
Tupperware containers set his pulse racing.
He closed the book and shoved it in his pack. If his sister,
Lucy, could see him now, camped illegally just outside a small town, she might
not be impressed by his choice of lifestyle, something they’d agreed to leave
out their infrequent chats. But she’d certainly have something to say about his
living arrangements.
Tim pulled a dark woollen beanie out of his pack and
stretched it over his head, dragging the edges down so his ears were covered.
Fishing his small stash out of a rolled-up pair of socks buried at the bottom
of the pack, he threw open the tent flap and shuffled outside.
Being alone and in the outdoors cleared his mind. He was
still taking his pills, but the haze of hopelessness that had shadowed him
since his mid-teens seemed to be blown away by the crisp air and stillness of
the forest. He suffered from depression, but wasn’t an idiot. Tim knew his
brain wasn’t really affected by smog and traffic, but the weight of the world
filled the city streets in a way that pushed down on him until life seemed
endless and without meaning.
He rolled a joint and lit it, sucking in the smoke and
holding it in his lungs. “Oh yeah.” He spoke to the moon, full and silvery,
then let the smoke roll over his tongue and out into the night air.
Around him, the forest was quiet, only the infrequent hoots
from a lone owl broke the silence. He’d have to head back in the morning, find
a place to charge his phone, then make the journey home. Lucy would be
thirty-three in a few days; her birthday was like a homing beacon, his signal
to check in. Tim didn’t mind making the trek; his only regret was leaving
behind the wildness of living outdoors.
He was a tramp, a vagrant, any of the tags put on him
fitted, but none of them mattered. After his last stint in Graylands Hospital,
he had decided to stop trying to force his mind into suburbia and just be.
Whether it was the miles of deserted coastline, the rugged bushland or the forest,
as long as he could breathe and maybe score some weed, he was as close to happy
as his brain would allow.
With the joint clamped between his lips, Tim pulled out his
phone. Only a few bars left, but enough to send Lucy a message and use the
torch until he found a visitors’ centre in town. He fired off a text and
attached a photo, noticing it was now ten p.m. She’d be asleep, getting her
rest so she could get into work early in the morning. He couldn’t help
chuckling at how different they were. Lucy the journalist, always pushing for
the next big story, and him… Tim’s thoughts wavered. He wished he could be
there for her more. Since their parents died, his sister had been a mother to
him. His protector, always making time to attend his psych meetings, but in
many ways Lucy was as lost as him. She needed someone. Someone that was strong
enough for her to lean on.
He took one last drag then pinched off the lighted end of
the joint. He’d stay longer this time, make an effort to make Lucy’s birthday
special. The twentieth of June was the anniversary of their parents’ death, but
maybe after all these years they could celebrate it as her day, without the
pull of sorrow.
After stowing the small butt with his stash, Tim crawled
back inside the tent and folded himself into the sleeping bag. Outside the tent
came a crackling of twigs and the brush of leaves. Tim attributed the sounds to
the usual nocturnal creatures moving around in the bush. He closed his eyes and
fell into an easy sleep. Some time later, heavy boots landed at the entrance to
the tent.
About the Author
Anna Willett is the author of Backwoods Ripper, Retribution
Ridge, Forgotten Crimes, Cruelty’s Daughter and the best-selling thriller,
Unwelcome Guests. Her new release, Small Town Nightmare is available on Amazon.
Raised in Western Australia Anna developed a love for fiction at an early age
and began writing short stories in high school. Drawn to dark tales, Anna
relishes writing thrillers with strong female characters. When she’s not
writing, Anna enjoys reading, travelling and spending time with her husband,
two children and their dogs.
Published on 29th August 2018 and available in paperback and
eBook formats.
Do be sure to follow the rest of the tour!
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