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Each year thousands of members vote for our Book of the Year award—congrats to A Flicker in the Dark!
We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Stacy Willingham, on your first book!
This is an early release that's only available to our members—the rest of the world has to wait to read it.
When a serial killer emerges with an eerily familiar pattern, Chloe Davis wonders if she's really escaped her past.
Psychological
Movieish
Murder
Unsettling
When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, Chloe’s father had been arrested as a serial killer and promptly put in prison. Chloe and the rest of her family were left to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.
Now 20 years later, Chloe is a psychologist in private practice in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She finally has a fragile grasp on the happiness she’s worked so hard to get. Sometimes, though, she feels as out of control of her own life as the troubled teens who are her patients. And then a local teenage girl goes missing, and then another, and that terrifying summer comes crashing back. Is she paranoid, and seeing parallels that aren't really there, or for the second time in her life, is she about to unmask a killer?
How does it feel to find out your father is a serial killer? And how do you go on with your life after such an event? Those are the questions at the heart of Stacey Willingham’s thrilling debut, a novel that is as much about family as it is about the monsters that live among us.
The narrator of A Flicker in the Dark is Chloe Davis, who was twelve when her father confessed to murdering six teenage girls in their hometown. Since then Chloe has gone to college, become a child-psychiatrist, and now, at 32, is on the cusp of marrying a dashing man. But the ground is still a little shaky. She is a little too fond of pharmaceutical escape, a little unsure about the people closest to her. So when girls start going missing again, in ways that suggest a copycat killer, Chloe becomes obsessively driven to discover the truth.
What this book gets so well is that the scariest monsters are not monsters all the time. Sometimes they are fathers, or best friends, or siblings, or lovers. Down deep, we want our boogeymen to come from somewhere else. We tell ourselves there are bad people out there, but they are strangers from another tribe, another town, another country. A Flicker in the Dark tells a different story: Don’t trust anyone. This book will keep you guessing right up until the very end, flying through chapters to find out who the monsters are.
Abby W.
Bellingham, WA
✨✨✨✨✨✨✨Spoilers✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨The plot twists were really something!!! I kept thinking it was her fiancé and we find out it's her brother?! This had me re thinking everything. Amazing book 5 stars
Katy D.
Liberty Hill, TX
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ this book is the definition of “Dark & Twisty.” Much like Willingham’s other novels, it’s full of twists and turns that keep you guessing. Read this one in under a week. Highly recommend!
Robin E.
Westminster , MD
This book was written so well! The characters evolution and twisty plot structure kept this book firmly in my hands. 5/5. I quickly purchased Willingham’s sophomore novel, it’s that’s good! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Samantha J.
Beaverton, OR
I can’t remember a time where I was so engrossed in reading. Willingham does an amazing job of making you wanting to read the next chapter…until you’ve finished the whole book in a few hours⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ashley F.
Sweet Springs, MO
This started off a little slow but quickly became impossible to put down! I thought I had it “figured out” at least 3 times before realizing that I was wrong once again… Fast read for me ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
