Lisa Ballantyne, international bestselling author of The Guilty One, delivers a compelling domestic thriller with impeccably observed characters and masterful edge-of-your-seat storytelling in a novel that leaps between past and present with page-turning finesse.
“A sweet novel of love, redemption, and loss that chronicles one family's struggle with a difficult past.”—Kirkus
(William Morrow Paperbacks, On-sale 10/6, ISBN: 9780052391483, $14.99)
They’re calling it the worst pile-up in London history. Driving home, Margaret Holloway has her mind elsewhere—on a troubled student, her daughter’s acting class, the next day’s meeting—when she’s rear-ended and trapped in the wreckage. Just as she begins to panic, a disfigured stranger pulls her from the car just seconds before it’s engulfed in flames. Then he simply disappears.
Though she escapes with minor injuries, Margaret feels that something’s wrong. She’s having trouble concentrating. Her emotions are running wild. More than that, flashbacks to the crash are also dredging up lost associations from her childhood, fragments of events that were wiped from her memory. Whatever happened, she didn’t merely forget—she chose to forget. And somehow, Margaret knows deep down that it’s got something to do with the man who saved her life.
As Margaret uncovers a mystery with chilling implications for her family and her very identity, Everything She Forgot winds through a riveting dual narrative and asks the question: How far would you go to hide the truth—from yourself…?
Though she escapes with minor injuries, Margaret feels that something’s wrong. She’s having trouble concentrating. Her emotions are running wild. More than that, flashbacks to the crash are also dredging up lost associations from her childhood, fragments of events that were wiped from her memory. Whatever happened, she didn’t merely forget—she chose to forget. And somehow, Margaret knows deep down that it’s got something to do with the man who saved her life.
As Margaret uncovers a mystery with chilling implications for her family and her very identity, Everything She Forgot winds through a riveting dual narrative and asks the question: How far would you go to hide the truth—from yourself…?
Lisa Ballantyne is the author of the Edgar Award-nominated The Guilty One. She spent most of her twenties working and living in China, before returning to the UK in 2002. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland.
BUY LINKS:
CHAPTER 1
Margaret Holloway
Thursday, December 5, 2013
Margaret Holloway wrapped her scarf around her face before she walked out into the school parking lot. It was not long after four o’clock, but a winter pall had shifted over London. It was dusk already, wary streetlamps casting premature light onto the icy pavements. Snowflakes had begun to swirl and Margaret blinked as one landed on her eyelashes. The first snow of the year always brought a silence, dampening down all sound. She felt gratefully alone, walking out into the new darkness, hers the only footprints on the path. She had been too hot inside and the cold air was welcome.
Her car was on the far side of the parking lot and she wasn’t wearing proper shoes for the weather, although she had on her long brown eiderdown coat. She had heard on the radio that it
was to be the worst winter in the past fifty years.
It was only a few weeks until her thirty-sixth birthday, which always fell during the school holidays, but she had so much to do before the end of term. She was carrying a large handbag, heavy with documents to read for a meeting tomorrow. She was one of two deputy head teachers at Byron Academy, and the only woman on the senior management team, although one of the four assistant heads below Margaret was female. The day had left her tense and electrified. Her mind was fresh popcorn in hot oil, noisy with all the things she still had to do.
She walked faster than she might have done in such wintry conditions, because she was angry.
“Don’t do this,” she had just pleaded with the head teacher, Malcolm Harris.
“It’s a serious breach,” Malcolm had said, leaning right back in his chair and putting two hands beside his head, as if surrendering, and showing a clear circle of sweat at each armpit. “I know how you feel about him. I know he’s one of your ‘projects’ but—”
“It’s not that . . . it’s just that permanent exclusion could ruin him. Stephen’s come so far.”
“I think you’ll find he’s known as Trap.”
“And I don’t think of him as a project,” Margaret had continued, ignoring Malcolm’s remark. She was well aware of Stephen Hardy’s gang affiliations—knew him better than most of the teachers. She had joined the school fresh out of college, as an English teacher, but had soon moved into the Learning
Support Unit. The unit often worked with children with behavioral problems who had to be removed from mainstream classes, and she had been shocked by the number of children who couldn’t even read or write. She had taught Stephen since his first year, when she discovered that, at the age of thirteen,
he still couldn’t write his own address. She had tutored him for two years until he was back in normal classes and had been so proud of him when he got his GCSEs.
“He was carrying a knife in school. It’s a simple case as far as I can see. He’s nearly seventeen years old and—” “It feels like you’re condemning him. This is coming at the worst time—he’s started his A Levels and he’s making such good progress. This’ll shatter his confidence.”
“We can’t have knives in school.”
“He wasn’t brandishing the knife. It was discovered by accident at the gym. You know he carries it for protection, nothing more.”
Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
LISA'S TOP FIVE SUSPENSE THRILLERS
1) Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
A beautifully crafted mystery with stunning prose and a pace worthy of contemporary times, this novel remains untouched - centuries later - as one of the best examples of psychological suspense.
2) The Premature Burial - Edgar Allan Poe
This is still unparalleled as the most terrifying story I have ever read.
3) The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins.
With multiple narrators and a plot that used Collins own legal skills, this classic of the genre also highlighted the vulnerabilities of married women under the law in the nineteenth century.
4) The Secret History - Donna Tartt
This gang of flawed anti-heroes compel from the first page as we read to find out why they killed their classmate, Bunny.
5) We Have to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
As well as being a dark examination of maternal ambivalence and nature-nurture, this is also a wonderfully constructed narrative building up to the final twist.
NOW FOR THE GIVEAWAY!
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