Extracts

One of the first things I saw on induction day at Levin-Bell Rowing Club was a bare bum.

Death is the most fundamental question

On the first morning of a new year, Beth’s not in her bed.

It was a standard bathroom.

Cole Wright is sitting in the rear seat of a black up-armored Chevy Suburban, one of three in a convoy speeding its way down Route 125 in the Seacoast Region of New Hampshire.

‘When are you going to let me kiss you?’

Even from this distance, Vivienne can hear the cultish drone of the singing bowls, and she rolls her eyes as she comes along the dark path between the trees.

Joan Goodwin gets to the Johnson Space Center well before nine, and Houston is already airless and muggy.

As a kid growing up, I thought by 25 I’d have my whole life together.

I have been a clinical psychologist for fourteen years.

I have to kill my sister.

Three hours later, Friday and Melanie were on a flight to Oslo. Ian was not with them.

The king of the Gods demanded a beautiful evil - and so I was born.

Hers was the second dead body I’d ever seen, not counting my mother’s.

I’ve never feared dying.

‘Jamila, your scan shows a lesion on the brain,’ the doctor explains.

This particular tale begins right at that moment when all things begin, which is when you don’t actually realise that something is about to begin.

‘Let’s buy a chateau’, they said . . . ‘It’ll be an adventure’, they said . . . ‘You’ll meet a prince’, they said . . .