Kelly Braffet
-
-
As she did in her darkly thrilling debut, Josie and Jack, Kelly Braffet again explores the often ambiguous nature of love and danger in a riveting novel of suspense. When twenty-something drifter Miranda Cassidy wrecks her car one night on the way home from a bar, she seizes the accident as an opportunity to reinvent her life. Hitching a ride with a mysterious stranger, she finds quick work and a fresh start hundreds of miles away in an oceanside vacation town. She doesn't look back, figuring no one is going to miss her. But when her mother finds no forwarding address, she senses something terrible has happened. The memory of the tragic disappearance of Miranda's father years before and the force of long-buried emotions drive her on a frantic quest to find her daughter, no matter what the cost.
-
In Josie and Jack, Kelly Braffet gives us a deliciously dark, suspenseful debut novel in the tradition of Patricia Highsmith.Beautiful, brilliant, and inseparable, Josie and Jack Raeburn live a secluded, anarchic existence in their decaying western Pennsylvania home. The only adult in their lives is their rage-prone father, a physicist, whose erratic behavior finally drives them away. Without a moral compass to guide them, Jack leads Josie into a menacing world of wealth, eroticism, and betrayal. His sociopathic tendencies emerge, and soon Josie must decide which is stronger: the love and devotion she feels for her brother or her will to survive.From its opening page to its shocking climax, this contemporary Hansel and Gretel story is compulsively readable and hugely entertaining.
-
When Patrick Cusimano's alcoholic father kills a child in a hit-and-run, Patrick is faced with a terrible choice: turn his father in - destroying what's left of his family in the process - or keep quiet. But can Patrick's brother, Mike, live with the choice that was made that night? Layla Elshere was once a poster girl for purity. But when her evangelical father forces her to spearhead a campaign against her school, it compels her to question everything she's ever known. Now Layla is doing all she can to obliterate her past. Verna loves her older sister Layla, but as events begin to spiral, Verna must make the hardest choice: save the person she loves most in the world - or save herself. Save Yourself is a stunning novel about power struggles and divided loyalties, and the way in which one terrible decision can alter the whole course of your life.When Patrick Cusimano's alcoholic father kills a child in a hit-and-run, Patrick is faced with a terrible choice: turn his father in - destroying what's left of his family in the process - or keep quiet. But can Patrick's brother, Mike, live with the choice that was made that night? Layla Elshere was once a poster girl for purity. But when her evangelical father forces her to spearhead a campaign against her school, it compels her to question everything she's ever known. Now Layla is doing all she can to obliterate her past. Verna loves her older sister Layla, but as events begin to spiral, Verna must make the hardest choice: save the person she loves most in the world - or save herself. Save Yourself is a stunning novel about power struggles and divided loyalties, and the way in which one terrible decision can alter the whole course of your life.
-
A gripping novel full of suspense and pathos that Dennis Lehane calls an "electrifying, tomahawk missile of a thriller."
Patrick Cusimano’s life can’t get much worse. His father is in jail, he works the midnight shift at a grubby convenience store, and his brother’s girlfriend, Caro, has pushed their friendship to an uncomfortable new level. On top of all that, he can’t shake the attentions of Layla Elshere, a goth teenager who befriends Patrick for reasons he doesn’t understand, and doesn’t fully trust. The temptations these two women offer are pushing Patrick to his breaking point.
Meanwhile, Layla’s little sister, Verna, is suffering through her first year of high school. She’s become a prime target for her cruel classmates, and not just because of her strange name and her fundamentalist parents. Layla’s bad-girl rep casts a shadow too heavy for Verna to bear alone, so she falls in with her sister’s tribe of outcasts. But their world is far darker than she ever imagined…
Unless Patrick, Layla, Caro, and Verna can forge their own twisted paths to peace--with themselves, with each other--then they’re stuck on a dangerous collision course where the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Kelly Braffet has written a novel of unnerving power--darkly compelling, compulsively addictive, and shockingly honest.
From the Hardcover edition.
