The Familiar Dark

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What to expect

From the bestselling author of The Roanoke Girls comes a new novel with the same incredible atmosphere, strong sense of place and dark heart. The Familiar Dark will blow you away.

In a small town beset by poverty in the Missouri Ozarks two 12-year-old girls are found dead in the park. Their throats have been cut.

Eve Taggert's daughter was one of them. Desperate with grief, she takes it upon herself to find out the truth about what happened to her little girl.

Eve is no stranger to the dark side of life - having been raised by a hard-edged mother whose parenting lessons she tried hard not to mimic. But with her daughter gone, Eve has no reason to stay soft. And she is going to need her mother's cruel brand of strength if she's going to face the truth about her daughter's death.

(P) 2020 Penguin Random House Audio

Critics Review

A dark and beautifully written thriller with a haunting ending that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page. Engel's ability to conjure the harsh beauty of the Ozarks is spellbinding. An emotional & powerful read
Something in the Water
Absolutely bloody brilliant. A down-at-heel mother burns with a need to exact her own brand of justice after the murder of her 12-year-old daughter. It's so well-written I felt like I was living her pain. Very highly recommended.
The Neighbour
I was completely enthralled from start to finish. Very dark, moving, intriguing and such compelling characters. What a fantastic writer Amy is. Truly inspiring; a real talent at work and I hope this book receives all the success it deserves
One Minute Later
I'm such a HUGE Roanoke fan so my hopes were sky high and it delivered in every possible way. As visceral as it is gripping, the story packs the kind of haunting gut-punch that Amy is so good at. It's just beautiful and harrowing and everything in between.
Chris Whitaker, award winning author of All The Wicked Girls
The Familiar Dark is full of very bad people who occasionally do the right thing and seemingly good people who hide their own demons, every nuance of human nature is here wrapped up in a hugely addictive piece of storytelling. The end, when it comes, is extraordinarily horrific in its reality and leaves you melancholy and full of feeling. This was brilliant. All the way. Don't miss it in 2020.
Liz Loves Books
A harrowing thriller . . . This rural noir stakes Engel's claim to that dystopian terrain somewhere between Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects and Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone
Publishers Weekly
This is fierce and brilliant
The Observer
From its gripping beginning to its sobering finale, Amy Engel's The Familiar Dark never fails to enthral with surprising twists . . . a perceptive story about women surviving against odds, a mother´s unconditional love, as well as grief, poverty and classism . . . Engel´s characters would have much in common with those in Gillian Flynn´s Sharp Objects
Daily Mail
Raw, powerful, beautiful - devastatingly good
TM Logan, bestselling author of The Holiday
Powerful, gripping, heart-stopping
Laura McHugh, award-winning author of The Wolf Wants In
This rural noir is full of twists and turns . . . Gripping and hard to put down
Hello Magazine
A story about grief, pretence and family, written by a former criminal defence lawyer, it tugs at the heartstrings with its raw emotional truth
Daily Mail
icily heartbreaking
The Metro
Engel's prose is sharp and often brutal, and result is a seriously impressive thriller
Spectator
I enjoyed it so much. A high quality, sharply written thriller whose motley cast of deviants and misfits delivers some breathtaking twists on the way to a bleak but very satisfying conclusion. This is the reality of motherhood - red in tooth and claw.
The Festival
An achingly raw, emotional story that was beautifully written. From the heartbreaking beginning to the shocking conclusion, it was a journey so powerful that it'll stay with me for a long time to come
The Serial Killer's Wife

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