Staff Pick
Jennifer McMahon's latest offering is a quirky combination murder mystery-thriller-supernatural-cursed family story. Throw in themes of homelessness, revenge, magic, LGBT issues, artistry, and drug abuse, and you've got quite a complex tale — one that only McMahon could tell. Miles sees his mother murdered by a masked man, and that tragedy follows him into adulthood and beyond; reverberations of that horrific act ripple through the generations. The revelation at the core of the mystery is completely gripping — I raced through this book in two days. And as a bonus, one of the most delightful surprises in this book is McMahon's perfectly rendered character, Pru. At the heart of a dowdy high school cafeteria lady, a true artist simmers; and with a little help from her friends, Pru blossoms into a true wonder.
McMahon delivers another winner! Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The New York Times best-selling author of The Winter People and Promise Not to Tell returns with a riveting psychological thriller in which an unresolved murder haunts a family for generations, forcing one daughter into a life of hiding and concealed identity to escape the threat of vengeance.
On a brilliantly sunny summer afternoon, ten-year-old Miles Sandeski witnesses the murder of his mother as she sunbathes in their suburban backyard. When he emerges from a hidden play space to disrupt the crime, Miles scares off the killer, but he is left with a powerful clue that will compel him to pursue the murderer and seek an understanding of the horrifying event for decades.
Years later, secretly aware of the killer's identity and what he is after, Miles will try to protect his teenage daughter from becoming the next victim the murderer wants something, held within Miles' family in the small industrial New England town of Ashton, and will fatally pursue each generation for what's desired.
Burntown unfolds as the story of Miles's daughter when she emerges from an incident intended to kill her, with a loss of memory and a total dislocation from the life she has known. Necco, as she comes to be known, embarks on a life as a kind of fugitive, hiding as an outsider in the town's abandoned corners Ashton's underbelly, Burntown reliant on kind strangers for her survival: a boyfriend who is himself a run-away, the mystical women known as "the fire eaters" who give her shelter in a camp by the river, practicing sooth and seeing through the altered reality of powerful herbs they call "The Devil's Snuff," Theo, a high-school senior who finds herself caught up in a romantic affair that compels her to sell drugs to students and teachers at Our Lady of Hope high school, and Pru, the cafeteria lady there, Theo's best customer, who dreams of being beautiful, talented, and adored in another life.
The lives of these misfits lost teens and adults intersect in a crime that implicates them all, and as they flee the police and the real killer who continues to hunt Necco, a story unfurls that is edge-of-your-seat suspenseful with classic Jennifer McMahon twists and surprises."
Synopsis
Ashford, Vermont, might look like your typical sleepy New England college town, but to the shadowy residents who live among the remains of its abandoned mills and factories, it s known as Burntown.
Eva Sandeski, known as Necco on the street, has been a part of this underworld for years, ever since the night her father Miles drowned in a flood that left her and her mother Lily homeless. A respected professor, Miles was also an inventor of fantastic machines, including one so secret that the plans were said to have been stolen from Thomas Edison s workshop. According to Lily, it s this machine that got Miles murdered.
Necco has always written off this claim as the fevered imaginings of a woman consumed by grief. But when Lily dies under mysterious circumstances, and Necco s boyfriend is murdered, she s convinced her mother was telling the truth. Now, on the run from the man called Snake Eyes, Necco must rely on other Burntown outsiders to survive.
There are the fire eaters, mystical women living off the grid in a campsite on the river s edge, practicing a kind of soothsaying inspired by powerful herbs called the devil s snuff; there s Theo, a high school senior who is scrambling to repay the money she owes a dangerous man; and then there s Pru, the cafeteria lady with a secret life.
As the lives of these misfits intersect, and as the killer from the Sandeski family s past draws ever closer, a story of edge-of-your-seat suspense begins to unfurl with classic Jennifer McMahon twists and surprises."
Synopsis
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People:
Ashford, Vermont, might look like your typical sleepy New England college town, but to the shadowy residents who live among the remains of its abandoned mills and factories, it's known as -Burntown.-
Eva Sandeski, known as -Necco- on the street, has been a part of this underworld for years, ever since the night her father Miles drowned in a flood that left her and her mother Lily homeless. A respected professor, Miles was also an inventor of fantastic machines, including one so secret that the plans were said to have been stolen from Thomas Edison's workshop. According to Lily, it's this machine that got Miles murdered.
Necco has always written off this claim as the fevered imaginings of a woman consumed by grief. But when Lily dies under mysterious circumstances, and Necco's boyfriend is murdered, she's convinced her mother was telling the truth. Now, on the run from the man called -Snake Eyes, - Necco must rely on other Burntown outsiders to survive.
There are the -fire eaters, - mystical women living off the grid in a campsite on the river's edge, practicing a kind of soothsaying inspired by powerful herbs called -the devil's snuff-; there's Theo, a high school senior who is scrambling to repay the money she owes a dangerous man; and then there's Pru, the cafeteria lady with a secret life.
As the lives of these misfits intersect, and as the killer from the Sandeski family's past draws ever closer, a story of edge-of-your-seat suspense begins to unfurl with classic Jennifer McMahon twists and surprises.
Synopsis
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People: A fantastic machine that can reunite the living with the dead. A haunting--and dangerous--legacy that could destroy one family for generations.
All families have secrets, but Eva Sandeski's family has a secret that someone is willing to kill for.
Find out why she's hiding in a mysterious place called Burntown...
Synopsis
On the surface, Ashford, Vermont, seems like a quaint New England college town, but to those who live among the shadowy remains of its abandoned mills and factories, and beneath its towering steel bridges, it's known as Burntown.
Eva Sandeski, who goes by the name Necco on the street, has been a part of Burntown's underworld for years, ever since the night her father, Miles, drowned in a flood that left her and her mother, Lily, homeless. A respected professor, Miles was also an inventor of fantastic machines, including one so secret that the plans were said to have been stolen from Thomas Edison's workshop. According to Lily, this machine got Miles murdered.
Necco has always written off this claim as the fevered imaginings of a woman consumed by grief. But when Lily also dies under mysterious circumstances, and Necco's boyfriend is murdered, she's convinced her mother was telling the truth. Now, on the run from a man called Snake Eyes, Necco must rely on other Burntown outsiders to survive.
As the lives of these misfits intersect, and as the killer from the Sandeski family's past draws ever closer, a story of edge-of-your-seat suspense begins to unfurl with classic Jennifer McMahon twists and turns.