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by Susan Bickford
The remote town of Oriska, New York, hasn't been home for Sydney Lucerno for thirteen years. She's escaped the creeping addictions and long-simmering anger that are as much a part of the landscape as the bitter cold. But when she gets the call that her mother is dying, every secret and fear she left behind is waiting to welcome her back.
Two days later, her mother's lover is dead too. And Sydney's sworn to protect a half-sister she never knew she had, a prickly teenager named Maude, with an opiate habit and a bad-news family. But more lies and feuds are poised to spring from every once-familiar corner. The predators Sydney thought she'd escaped are threatening both her and Maude. To get free, Sydney will have to discover the truth about what happened when she left—and decide what should stay buried, deep in the unforgiving snow...
"Though the plot packs plenty of twists, the novel's power comes from this pair of feisty, equally headstrong sibs, trying to figure out their relationship as they fight to survive. Bickford is a writer to watch." - Publishers Weekly
"Hearts thaw slowly but rewardingly amid subzero temperatures and hard-won bromides about drug abuse." - Kirkus Reviews
"There's so much to love in Susan Bickford's newest novel, Dread of Winter: a profound sense of place, the visceral evocation of a bitter winter's cold, a dead-on depiction of the pit of despair that is the opioid epidemic, and language so beautiful on the page it'll give you goosebumps. I'm a newcomer to Bickford's work, but I'm putting her on my list of must-read authors. You should, too." - William Kent Krueger
This information about Dread of Winter 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.
Susan Alice Bickford was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Central New York. Her passion for technology pulled her to Silicon Valley, where she became an executive at a leading technology company. She now works as an independent consultant, and continues to be fascinated by all things high tech. She splits her time between Silicon Valley and Vermont. Her first novel, A Short Time to Die, launched her career as an acclaimed writer of dark suspense.
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