Burntown

Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People comes a novel of edge-of-your-seat suspense starring a group of misfits trying to outsmart a killer in small-town Vermont. On the surface, Ashford, Vermont, seems like a quaint New England college town, but to those who live among the shadowy remains of its abandoned mills and factories and beneath its towering steel bridges, it's known as Burntown. Eva Sandeski, who goes by the name Necco on the street, has been a part of Burntown's underworld for years, ever since the night her father, Miles, drowned in a flood that left her and her mother, Lily, homeless. Now, on the run from a man called Snake Eyes, Necco must rely on other Burntown outsiders to survive. As the lives of these misfits intersect, and as the killer from the Sandeski family's past draws ever closer, a story begins to unfurl with classic Jennifer McMahon twists and turns.