Fiction
"I'm always happy to read as-yet-unpublished debuts, but it's really rare that I stay up until three a.m. reading one, turning pages so fast it's a wonder I didn't get whiplash. Not only is Lauren's book gorgeously written (I was underlining phrases), but it's also a super-smart psychological study about the lives of women--one rich, one strugglingly poor--about aging parents, the tragedy of so-called justice, marriage and its discontents, and a nail-biting literary thriller, with an ending I honest to God never saw coming. Truly special and totally unforgettatble."
- Caroline Leavitt, New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You, Is This Tomorrow and Cruel Beautiful World
Novels & Stories
Play Me Backwards
It's 1990. For more than a decade, hysterical communities have prosecuted and shut down daycares for using young children in Satanic Rituals.
When four-year-old Kaitlyn Price disappears without a trace, Melanie Taylor doesn't think to blame the Bishop Family Daycare where her own four-year-old daughter, Nessa, attends, and her 15-year-old daughter, Paige, works part-time. But when Nessa wakes up screaming Kaitlyn's name and covered in unexplained bruises, Melanie begins to suspect the unthinkable. And Paige knows more than she's telling.
Desperate to protect her daughter, Melanie becomes the catalyst for a hysteria that threatens to destroy everything she loves. How far will she go to protect her daughters, and what will she do if forced to chose between them?
Read the first page here:
https://gutsygreatnovelist.com/page-one-prize-winners-2022/