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Shop nowThe Next Time You See Me
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A debut novel by award-winning author Holly Goddard Jones, about the people surprisingly connected to the discovery of a dead woman's body in a small town
Thirteen-year-old Emily Houchens doesn't have many friends. She finds more comfort playing make-believe in the woods near her house in Roma, Kentucky, than with her classmates, who find her strange and awkward. When she happens upon a dead body hidden in the woods one day, she decides not to tell anyone about her discovery—a choice that begins to haunt her.
Susanna Mitchell has always been a good girl, the dutiful daughter and wife. While her older sister Ronnie trolled bars for men and often drove home at sunrise, Susanna kept a neat house, a respectable job, and a young daughter. But when Ronnie goes missing and Susanna realizes that she's the only person in Roma who truly cares about her sister's fate, she starts to question her quiet life and its value.
The Next Time You See Me is the story of how one woman's disappearance exposes the ambitions, prejudices, and anxieties of a small southern town and its residents, who are all connected, sometimes in unexpected ways: Emily; Susanna; Tony, a failed baseball star turned detective, aspiring to be the county's first black sheriff; and Wyatt, a fifty-five-year-old factory worker tormented by a past he can't change and by a love he doesn't think he deserves. Their stories converge in a violent climax that reveals not just the mystery of what happened to Ronnie but all of their secret selves.
Holly Goddard Jones is the author of Girl Trouble: Stories. Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, Epoch, Best American Mystery Stories, New Stories from the South, and elsewhere. A 2007 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, she lives in North Carolina with her husband, Brandon, and teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Original bio sent from Cassandra:
Cassandra Campbell began doing voice overs as the voice for Calvin Klein’s Italian commercials. This was followed by commercial and documentary recording in both English and Italian. She has recorded many audiobooks and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as an Audie® Award nomination. As an actress and director, she has worked at the Public, the Mint, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Stagewest, Theatreworks, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, Millmountain Theatre, the National Shakespeare Company, and the New York Fringe Festival.
Reviews
“The lonely cast of outcasts in The Next Time You See Me has enough heartache for a whole jukebox full of country songs. Holly Goddard Jones spins a tight if heartbreaking tale, always keeping the reader leaning forward.”
“So rich in character. I loved the subtlety and complexity of Wyatt and
Sarah, and of course, Susanna, the whole thing woven deftly together
with a light hand. An immensely satisfying and skillful debut novel.”
“The Next Time You See Me gives readers all the pleasures of the best mystery novels as well as the finest literary fiction. No matter gender, age, or social class, Jones’ boundless empathy renders characters who are vivid, complex, utterly realized. She is an exceptionally talented writer.”
“The Next Time You See Me is an astoundingly good novel. Holly Goddard Jones writes with authority and a deep generosity about a large swath of humanity within a small town: Outsiders and insiders, middle-schoolers and the middle-aged, the violent and the violated, the lost and the found—and all those in between. The result is simply mesmerizing.”
“Have you turned the last pages of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl and don’t know what to pick up next? Try Holly Goddard Jones’ debut novel, The Next Time You See Me, which Flynn herself has called ‘simply mesmerizing.’ In this page-turner, Jones returns to the territory of her wonderful story collection, Girl Trouble. Like Flynn, she not only creates young women with troubles, she also vividly depicts a part of the country often obscured from view…Jones builds suspense as she creates problematic small-town America characters. She deftly avoids cliché in her depiction of the town’s outsiders—and insiders.”
“Jones ties together the narratives effectively, cycling point of view between the three main players.”
“Jones’ well-crafted tale captures small-town nuances while exploring the individual psychologies of her characters and their struggles.”
“The residents of a small Kentucky town react to the disappearance of a local woman in this first novel by short-story writer Jones…[The author] builds intense tension surrounding the choices her flawed but compellingly sympathetic characters make as they fight against lonely isolation within the tight confines of small-town America.”
“Jones brilliantly weaves together story lines from unexpected angles. Her writing is fluid and she keeps a pace that will have readers lacing on their running shoes. And what a suspenseful, emotional, addictive run it is!”
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