by Frances Greenslade
Gritty and real, this is a very well-written book worth your time. While literary, it is not a steeped, deep read, but, rather, a solid, riveting read that is intense in its circumstances. Well recommended. Read a sample chapter to see if it’s a book you might care to read. –D. L. Keur, The Deepening World of Books
AVAILABLE IN MULTIPLE FORMATS FROM AMAZON.COM
ABOUT THIS DEBUT NOVEL
From an impressive new literary talent, a heartbreaking, lushly imagined novel that explores the deep bond between two very different sisters whose world is shattered when their mother mysteriously abandons them.
Before their father died, Maggie and Jenny’s life felt nearly perfect. Seasons in their tiny rural home were peppered with wilderness hikes, building makeshift shelters and telling stories by the fire with Patrick and Irene, their doting father and beautiful, quick-to-laugh mother. But not long after Maggie’s tenth birthday, Patrick is killed in a logging accident—and a few months later, Irene abruptly drops the girls at a neighbor’s house, promising to return in a few weeks. She never does.
Left in the care of a childless couple, Maggie and Jenny learn to depend on one another, keeping alive the faith that their mother is coming back. Yet as years start to pass, and the girls go to school, fall in love, and begin to grow apart, Maggie struggles with the mystery of what could have happened to their once warm, loving mother to make her abandon her daughters. And when the girls find themselves facing a crisis too overwhelming to handle alone, Maggie finally decides it is time to heal their fractured family at any cost and she takes off to try to bring their mother home at last.
Told in Maggie’s strong, plucky voice, Shelter celebrates the love between two sisters and the complicated bonds of family. It is an exquisitely written ode to sisters, mothers, daughters, and to a woman’s responsibility to herself and those she loves.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frances Greenslade was born in southern Ontario, near Niagara Falls in 1961. She read English at the University of Winnipeg and took a Masters in Creative Writing at University of British Columbia. There, inspired by her surroundings, she read books about survival, about building homes in the wilderness and guides to edible plants and began to imagine a novel about a woman who disappears into the mysterious landscape and leaves her two daughters to wonder and worry.
“The only clue we have to our brother’s whereabouts is this place that doesn’t really exist.” Ten years ago, Blythe Randall broke James Pryce’s heart. Now she needs his help. Her enigmatic appeal lures the elite hacker into his most tantalizing, and most personal, assignment yet. A Harvard dropout employed by Manhattan-based RedRook Security, James makes a living finding people who don’t want to be found, pursuing their digital tracks around the globe, flushing out criminals, and exacting creative high-tech revenge on behalf of his clients. But this time he’s following his target—billionaire multimedia artist Billy Randall—into an exotic and treacherous world: a virtual one.
Four friends, recent college graduates, caught in a terrible job market, joke about turning to kidnapping to survive. And then, suddenly, it’s no joke. For two years, the strategy they devise-quick, efficient, low risk-works like a charm. Until they kidnap the wrong man.