Excerpt from Before We Sleep by Jeffrey Lent, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Even as he'd understand he was part of the reason she had to leave. She was less sure her mother would come to the same conclusion.

In the village she turned onto the state road and went on through the three blocks of two- and three-story buildings, all dark, the houses set back from the street, the elms and maples dense canopies passing overhead and then lost to the headlights, the streetlights abrupt small flares that died and fled behind her, a wavering row of them out ahead. She drove carefully, alert to the possibility of a cruiser and had her story of sleeplessness ready and reached up and unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and pushed the suitcase onto the passenger floorboards but she saw no one and soon left the village and the streetlights and was out on the road in the summer night.

She was two months past seventeen, determined and terrified.

From Before We Sleep by Jeffrey Lent. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing. Copyright 2017 Jeffrey Lent.