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Published Nov 2017
288 pages
Genre: Thrillers
Publication Information
From actress, producer, and writer, Krysten Ritter, a psychological suspense novel about a woman forced to confront her past in the wake of small-town corruption.
Can you ever outrun your past?
It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home and scrubbed away all visible evidence of her small town roots. Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago, she has a thriving career, a modern apartment, and her pick of meaningless one-night stands.
But when a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana, the life Abby painstakingly created begins to crack. Tasked with investigating Optimal Plastics, the town's most high-profile company and economic heart, Abby begins to find strange connections to Barrens' biggest scandal from more than a decade ago involving the popular Kaycee Mitchell and her closest friends - just before Kaycee disappeared for good.
Abby knows the key to solving any case lies in the weak spots, the unanswered questions. But as she tries desperately to find out what really happened to Kaycee, troubling memories begin to resurface and she begins to doubt her own observations. And when she unearths an even more disturbing secret - a ritual called "The Game," it will threaten the reputations, and lives, of the community and risk exposing a darkness that may consume her.
With tantalizing twists, slow-burning suspense, and a remote, rural town of just five claustrophobic miles, Bonfire is a dark exploration of what happens when your past and present collide.
"Starred Review. Actress Ritter (Marvel's Jessica Jones) makes a triumphant fiction debut with this pulse-pounding thriller featuring a sympathetic, broken lead character... Pitch-perfect." - Publishers Weekly
"Ritter, lead actress on television's Jessica Jones, is likely to attract readers with her name, but this strong, gritty debut is good enough to create its own fan following." - Booklist
"A fast-paced thriller that doesn't reinvent the wheel but introduces a tough female lead who's easy to root for." - Kirkus
"I burned through Krysten Ritter's hugely accomplished debut. Bonfire is dark, disturbing, and compulsively readable." - Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10
"Bonfire is a stone-cold stunner - the writing is dazzling, the suspense is creeping, and the story of a woman returning home to face her past is brimming with emotion and truth. An extraordinary debut from a major talent." - Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter
"A vicious years-old small town scandal makes the perfect backdrop for this gritty, moody mystery that will have readers ripping through the pages at top speed. Bonfire ushers in a bold new voice to the suspense genre. I can't wait to see what Ritter dreams up next." - Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Good Girl
This information about Bonfire was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Krysten Ritter is well known for her starring roles in the award winning Netflix original series, Marvel's Jessica Jones, and cult favorite, Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, as well as her pivotal role on AMC's Breaking Bad. Krysten's work on film includes Big Eyes, Listen Up Philip, Life Happens, Confessions of a Shopaholic and She's Out of My League. She is the founder of Silent Machine, a production company which aims to highlight complex female protagonists. Ritter and her dog Mikey split their time between New York and Los Angeles.
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