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The Vanishing Season by Joanna Schaffhausen
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The Vanishing Season

$17.96

Retail price: $19.95

Discount: 9%

This title is not eligible for purchase with membership credits. Why?

Narrator Lauren Fortgang
Length 8 hours 57 minutes
Language English
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Ellery Hathaway knows a thing or two about serial killers, but not through her police training. She’s an officer in sleepy Woodbury, Massachusetts, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number seventeen in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only victim who lived.

When three people disappear from her town in three years, all around her birthday―the day she was kidnapped so long ago―Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous. Her superiors dismiss her concerns, but Ellery knows the vanishing season is coming and anyone could be next. She contacts the one man she knows will believe her: the FBI agent who saved her from a killer’s closet all those years ago.

Agent Reed Markham made his name and fame on the back of the Coben case, but his fortunes have since turned. His marriage is in shambles, his bosses think he’s washed up, and worst of all, he blew a major investigation. When Ellery calls him, he can’t help but wonder: sure, he rescued her, but was she ever truly saved? His greatest triumph is Ellery’s waking nightmare, and now both of them are about to be sucked into the past, back to the case that made them … with a killer who can’t let go.

Joanna Schaffhausen wields a mean scalpel, skills developed in her years studying neuroscience. She has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brain―how it develops and the many ways it can go wrong. Previously, she worked for ABC News, writing for programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and daughter. She is also the author of The Vanishing Season and No Mercy.

Lauren Fortgang, a graduate of Fordham University’s Theater Program, is an actress, costume designer, and narrator. She has recorded everything from video games to textbooks. Her audiobook narrations have earned AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed her as a finalist for an Audie Award in 2014.

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Reviews

"[Features] precise prose, the suspenseful plot, and the emotionally tortured characters, to say nothing of an irresistible basset hound named Bump.”

“Schaffhausen’s debut is a fantastic, convoluted thriller that will have her audience on the edge of their seats…Her protagonists are complex yet brilliantly believable, competent, yet very imperfectly human. The villain is both evil and cunning. The storytelling is exceptional and the dialogue is powerful. This chilling tale will have readers guessing till the end.”

“Lauren Fortgang narrates this suspenseful debut thriller…She finds a nice balance between Ellery’s sadness for her stolen childhood and her resolve to move on. Ellery and Markham’s platonic relationship is the story’s driving force, and it sounds entirely authentic, especially as voiced by Fortgang.”

“The complex plot and affecting characters—especially gritty survivor Ellie and her basset hound, Bump—make for some nail-bitingly tense thrills.”

“Winner of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America award for First Crime Novel Competition, this gripping thriller will be sure to please fans of Karin Slaughter.”

“Dark, disturbing, and relentlessly sinister—this intense thriller plumbs the darkest corners of terror, survival, and psychological damage. Be warned: leave on the light! But start reading right now.”

“A gripping debut with a plot twist readers won’t see coming…Ellery Hathaway is a survivor whose grace, intelligence, and grit reminded me of Clarice Starling.”

“A twisted story with an unforgettable protagonist.”

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