No Silver Bells

No Silver Bells is a slow burn with a high payoff. A stand-alone psychological thriller set in a fictionalized Michigan lake shore county. It follows the life of Author Eve Strange and the four murders of those closest to her. Eve’s first person narration is intelligent but dark with dry, witty humor. She suffers from dissociation as a result of her abuse as a child and the side quests her mind takes offer clues to the unfolding story. It begins with the death of Eve Strange’s mother, Jennifer, by Eve’s stepfather, Scott. Scott claims to have no memory of the night Jennifer died despite being covered in her blood. Scott ends up dead in prison prior to the trial– an apparent suicide– after a visit from Eve. A dark romance unfolds between Eve and Jack, who himself has an unsettling amount of dead relatives in his wake. The two have a falling out and Eve ends up pregnant by a very vanilla man who, himself, has an abundance of demons. When she and the husband begin discussing divorce, he ends up dead as well. Eve and Jack rekindle their love affair only for Eve to learn that Jack has been lying to her all along. Jack disappears and Eve makes an unlikely connection. The story ends by detailing the whodunit of the four departed and leaves a subtle cliff hanger for book 2.