There’s a notorious stretch of road known as Sally in the Wood, where far too many drivers have met tragic ends. One night, a taxi driver narrowly avoids hitting a ghostly figure that darts across the road. The next morning, eight hiking Girl Guides discover the body of a dead girl on a woodland trail near Folly View College. Was she running from something? And what really happened on Halloween night, when a group of students held an impromptu bonfire party and one of them ended up dead in ONE DARK NIGHT by Hannah Richell.
The dead girl is Sarah, a recent transfer student who easily integrated into the social scene at Folly View. As classmates are interviewed, Rachel Dean, the Head of Student Welfare at Folly View College finds her daughter, Ellie strangely detached from the tragedy. After learning her daughter attended the party, and evidence was found of an altercation between her daughter and the victim, Rachel, and her husband, Detective Sergeant Ben Chase, became increasingly concerned. As the investigation deepens, Rachel and Ben must put aside their personal differences and find out how Ellie is involved and who ultimately ended the young woman’s life.
Set in a close-knit British community, ONE DARK NIGHT brims with a dark academia atmosphere, intense teenage emotions, and twisting plotlines. Sarah's death is both brutal and mysterious, and suspects abound: a jealous classmate, a rejected love interest, a local drug dealer, a predatory faculty member, a homeless drifter, or the unsettling caretaker who roams the campus at night. Clues unfold through bloody clothing, cryptic messages scrawled on the body, a missing phone, a single arrest, text trails, and fractured family dynamics. As jealousy and betrayal come to light, readers are pulled into a web of suspense that keeps them guessing until the final pages, when even the most likely suspect becomes less likely. ONE DARK NIGHT is highly engaging and readable; the characters hook you in and take you on a ride of haunting intrigue and unrelenting suspense.
When a body is found the day after Halloween, a small British community must reckon with its past and the dangers lurking in its present in this spine-tingling novel from “not to be missed” (Hayley Scrivener, author of Dirt Creek) author Hannah Richell.On Halloween, a group of teenage students meet in the woods near Sally in the Wood, a road steeped in local lore and rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. By the end of the night, one student will be dead.Rachel, the school guidance counselor, is trying to keep a handle on her increasingly distant teenaged daughter, Ellie, while students and parents panic and mourn. Her ex-husband and detective Ben, dealing with a personal crisis of his own, has concerns about his daughter’s safety as he investigates the death. Meanwhile, Ellie is keeping secrets from both her parents, including one about where she was that night.Told from multiple perspectives and with Hannah Richell’s distinct “atmospheric and ever-twisting” (Emylia Hall, author of the Shell House Detective Mysteries) prose, One Dark Night is a white-knuckled and suspenseful thriller about urban legends, privilege, and how the past continues to haunt us.
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