A gripping psychological thriller with chilling twists, from a unique new voice.
Keller Baye and Rebecca Brown live on different sides of the Atlantic. Until she falls in love with him, Rebecca knows nothing of Keller. But he’s known about her for a very long time, and now he wants to destroy her.
This is the story of two families. One living under the threat of execution in North Carolina. The other caught up in a dark mystery in the Scottish Highlands.
The families’ paths are destined to cross. But why? And can anything save them when that happens?
Keller Baye and Rebecca Brown live on different sides of the Atlantic. Until she falls in love with him, Rebecca knows nothing of Keller. But he’s known about her for a very long time, and now he wants to destroy her.
This is the story of two families. One living under the threat of execution in North Carolina. The other caught up in a dark mystery in the Scottish Highlands.
The families’ paths are destined to cross. But why? And can anything save them when that happens?
THE ART OF HIDING
So the name of my new novel is ‘Hiding’. (Actually, I have a pet hate about beginning a sentence with ‘so’. Everyone is doing it. And when everyone starts blindly doing something, I worry. It somehow makes me think of the Nuremberg Rallies. Yes, I suppose that response is a little over the top. But do you know what I mean?
So… I called my novel ‘Hiding’. I thought of many titles but I kept coming back to this one. I didn’t mind at all that it was simple. It was perfect. There is a lot of hiding that goes on in this novel, much of which I cannot give away here, but there are other kinds of hiding too. There is the kind we all do in our childhoods, as we brood and suffer in our rooms. There is the kind we do in make believe games, as we take on disguises. (Less popular I believe in online 21st century.) In ‘Hiding’, ‘Rebecca’ sneaks out of the house (which looks more like a Rhenish correctional facility than a home) and hides behind trees on the driveway. She regularly steals all the family silver from ‘Taransay’, where she and her siblings are orphaned, though she returns it later.
But there are other kinds of hiding too. A person can give a hiding and of course a person can receive a hiding. In this story, there’s a bird hide where… things happen. There’s Keller’s face on the book cover, predatory yet badly injured himself. Is there a play on ‘hide’, like Mr Hyde perhaps? Does Keller Baye have a Jekyll side? There are all kinds of questions here, and a lot of story telling just from the picture; a house on a cliff and if you look closely, a little cat in the forest. That cat is called Steve Truffaut and he looks like he’s hiding too.
As a child, I hid a lot. Does everyone? I had a den in the woods behind my house. I took unlikely things there, like a broken toaster. I’m not sure why I thought that a soggy bramble-strewn camp in a forest would have a plug point, but I was very excited with the gleam of that silver toaster. I spent a lot of time in the den and officially packed for running away. I’d last almost two hours. I had food, so it wasn’t hunger that made me go home. I just got bored and my need to talk was strong. I ‘ran away’ primarily to worry my mother, so that she’d appreciate me properly. She never noticed I was gone.
I also stole silver from the house and snuck away with it. Then I’d return it later, thinking how clever I’d been. You’ve guessed it, no-one noticed it was gone. Perhaps like ‘Rebecca’, I wondered if burglary was a career option later, if I got desperate.
Fortunately, I’m a writer and haven’t had to turn to crime yet, except to make fiction of it.
Author Info
Jenny is a novelist, screenplay writer and playwright. After a series of 'proper jobs', she realised she was living someone else's life and escaped to Gascony to make gîtes. Knee deep in cement and pregnant, Jenny was happy. Then autism and a distracted spine surgeon wiped out the order. Returned to wonderful England, to write her socks off. Jenny would like to see the Northern Lights but worries that’s the best bit and should be saved till last. Very happily, and gratefully, settled with family.
She tries not to take herself too seriously.
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