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A Novel
by Marie Tierney
Finding a dead body is not normal. But Ava is not a normal teenager. In this chillingly beautiful mystery, only the obsessive spirit of youth can save a desperate town from the savagery within.
Ava Bonney is a compassionate and studious fourteen-year-old girl with a dark secret: She has an obsessive interest in the macabre and is fascinated by how dead animals decompose. The highway she lives by regularly offers up gifts of roadkill, and in the dead of night Ava loves nothing more than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den and record her findings.
One night, she stumbles across the body of her classmate. Fearing that her secret ritual could be revealed, she makes an anonymous call to the police. But even when local detectives take over the case, Ava won't step back―not while teenagers continue to go missing.
Racing alongside the police or against them, Ava is determined to figure out who is hunting her classmates before she becomes the next prey.
"By turns terrifying and heartbreaking in its depictions of the bloodthirsty killer―and, by extension, the brutality that lies at the heart of every human being―this eloquent, darkly suspenseful debut novel will haunt the reader's imagination. An edge-of-your-seat thriller with a savage twist." —Kirkus Reviews
"Ava earns readers' investment in this macabre procedural―she's a clever, compassionate, and resourceful protagonist with series-carrying potential. Mo Hayder fans will find much to admire." —Publishers Weekly
"Tierney's debut novel is a dark, twisted story featuring a unique heroine and a haunting mystery.... Thriller fans who like their stories on the darker side will adore this book." —Booklist
This information about Deadly Animals 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.
Marie Tierney was a finalist in the Daily Mail First Novel competition. Born and raised in Birmingham, England, Marie dedicated almost twenty years to working in education before becoming a full-time writer. When she isn't researching criminal history, she writes plays and poetry. She lives in East Anglia with her husband and son.
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