The Last Thing to Burn: A Novel by Will Dean (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean "Immediate, intense, gripping, taut, terrifying, moving, and brilliant." --Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Invisible Girl "Brilliantly written...terrifying."--Ruth Ware, #1 New York Times bestselling author of One by One A woman being held captive is willing to risk everything to save herself, her unborn child, and her captors latest victim in this "intense, dark, and utterly chilling" (Jennifer Hillier, author of Jar of Hearts) thriller in the tradition of Misery and Room. On an isolated farm in the United Kingdom, a woman is trapped by the monster who kidnapped her seven years ago. When she discovers she is pregnant, she resolves to protect her child, no matter the cost, and starts to meticulously plot her escape. But when another woman is brought into the fold on the farm, her plans go awry. Can she save herself, her child, and this innocent woman at the same time? Or is she doomed to spend the remainder of her life as a captive? Intense, dark, and utterly gripping The Last Thing to Burn "explores the resilience of the human spirit, even in the face of unfathomable evil. This harrowing journey is one worth taking" (Publishers Weekly). FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Author Biography Will Dean grew up in the East Midlands of the United Kingdom. After studying law at the London School of Economics and working in London, he settled in rural Sweden where he built a wooden house in a vast forest, and its from this base that he compulsively reads and writes. His debut novel, Dark Pines, was selected for Zoe Balls book club on ITV, shortlisted for the National Book Award (UK), The Guardians Not the Booker prize, and was named a Telegraph book of the year. He is also the author of This Is Not the End, The Last One, First Born, The Last Thing to Burn, which was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and The Chamber. Review "A heart-racing exploration about human survival. An addictive and insightful thriller."--Maxine Mei-Fung Chung, critically-acclaimed author of THE EIGHTH GIRL"A story of pain and survival that I almost guarantee will stay with you long after you close the book."-- "Men Reading Books""Brilliant."--Elly Griffiths, internationally bestselling author of THE LANTERN MEN"Compelling. A well-written domestic thriller."-- "Mystery & Suspense Magazine""I could not stop reading this! Brilliantly done . . . Im awestruck!"--Denise Mina, internationally bestselling author of THE LESS DEAD (via Twitter)"I couldnt put it down. A visceral nightmare of a book with one of the most evil villains Ive come across in a long time. Powerful writing."--Steve Cavanagh, award-winning author of THE DEFENSE"Ratchets up the tension to the point where I had to check my pulse."--Liz Nugent, critically-acclaimed author of LITTLE CRUELTIES"This outstanding thriller by Will Dean might be the best book you read this year. THE LAST THING TO BURN is intense, dark, and utterly chilling -- I felt this one in my bones."--Jennifer Hillier, award-winning author of JAR OF HEARTS and LITTLE SECRETS Review Quote "Brilliant." Excerpt from Book Chapter 1 1 Im not going back. Not now, not ever. My right ankle is the size of a fist and I can feel bone shards scraping together, six-year-old shards, as I limp away from the farm cottage toward the distant road. The destination is there, I can see it, but its not getting any closer. I walk and hobble and its still a whole world of pain away from where I am right now. My eyes scan the distant road, left, then right, for him. Very little traffic. Trucks transporting cabbages and sugar beets; cars ferrying fruit pickers. One bus a day. I have my fiver, his fiver, my ticket out of this flatland hell. The creased green papers rolled and tucked into my hair, still black after these nine long years though only God knows how. Every step is a mile. Etched aches and new pains melt into red-hot misery beneath my right knee: boiling fat and razor-sharp icicles all at once. The track is pale October brown, the mud churned and dried and churned by the tractor. His tractor. I move as fast as I can, my teeth biting down onto my tongue. Im balancing different pains. Managing best I can. Hes not coming. I can spot his Land Rover from a mile away. I stop to breathe. The clouds are moving over me, urging me out of this forgotten place, helping me at my back, pushing me along toward that road, toward that one bus per day with his banknote hidden in my hair. Is that? No. Please, no. It cant be. I stand completely still, my anklebone throbbing stronger than my own heart, and he is there on the horizon. Is that his truck? Maybe its just the same model. Some plow salesman or schoolteacher. I look right, toward the town past the bridge, and left, toward the village. Places Ive never been to. My eyes lock onto the Land Rover. His Land Rover. Keep driving, for the love of God be someone else and keep on driving. But he slows and then my shoulders fall. He turns onto this track, his track, the track to his farm, to his land. I look right at the nothingness, the endless fields hes sculpted, and the spires in the distance, and then left to the wind turbines and the nothingness there, and then back. Thats when I weep. Tearless, noiseless weeping. I fall. I fold forward with a crack, a sharp stone beneath my right knee, a blessed distraction from my ankle. He drives to me and I just kneel. With a clean, clear-thinking head maybe Id have managed to escape? Not with this leg. Not with him always coming back. Always checking on me. Always watching. Its Kim-Ly in my head now and I will not let him in. My sister, my little sister, it is you who gives me the strength to breathe right now on this long, straight-churned mud track in this unseen flatland. Im here for you. Existing so that you can carry on. I know whats to come. The fresh horrors. And I will endure them for you and you alone. He stands over me. Once again, I exist only in his shadow. Consumed by it. I wont look at him, not today. I think of you, Kim-Ly, with Mothers eyes and Fathers lips and your own nose. I will not look up at him. Ive made it past the locked halfway gate. But no farther. Its still his land all around. Smothering me. He bends and reaches out and gently picks me up off the dirt and he lifts me higher to his shoulder and carries me on toward the cottage. I am as limp as death. My tears fall to the mud, to the footprints I created an hour ago, the mans size eleven sandal prints; one straight, the other a right angle--that one a pathetic scrape more than a print, each step a victory and an escape and a complete failure. He walks without speaking, his strong shoulder pressing into my waist, hard and plateaued. He holds me with no force. His power is absolute. He needs no violence at this moment because he controls everything the eye can see. I can feel his forearm at the back of my knees and hes holding it there as gently as a concert violinist might hold a bow. My ankle is ruined. The nerves and bones and tendons and muscles are as one damaged bundle; sharp flints and old meat. Fire. I feel nothing else. The pain is something I live with every day of my life, but not like this. This is wretched. My mouth is open. A silent cry. A hopeless and unending scream. He stops and opens the door that I scrub for him each morning and we go inside his cottage. I have failed and what will he do to me this time? He turns and walks past the mirror and past the key box bolted high on the wall and heads into our one proper downstairs room. In Vietnam my family had six downstairs rooms. He takes me past the locked TV door and past the camera and places me down on the plastic-wrapped sofa like Im a sleeping toddler extracted from some long car journey. He looks down at me. "Youll want a pain pill, I expect." I close my eyes tight and nod. "Itll come." He takes the Land Rover keys from his pocket and walks to the key box in the entrance hall. He takes the key from the chain around his neck and opens the box and locks away the keys and then locks the box. He comes back in. A man twice the size of my father but half the worth of a rat. "Empty em." "What?" I say. "Empty your pockets, then." I unzip his fleece, the zipper buckling as I sit hunched on his sofa, and reach down into my apron, his mothers apron, and pull out my remaining four objects, the four things I have left in the world that are actually mine. "Four left." I nod. "Well, your fault, aint nobody to blame but yourself, Jane." My name isnt Jane. "Pick one." I look down at the plastic dust sheet covering the sofa, at the ID card, which contains the last words I possess in my own language, the last photo of myself, of what I used to look like before all this happened. Its the last thing with my real name, Thanh Dao; with my date of birth, November 3; with my place of birth, Bi Details ISBN1982156473 Author Will Dean Short Title The Last Thing to Burn Pages 256 Language English Year 2022 ISBN-10 1982156473 ISBN-13 9781982156473 Format Paperback Publication Date 2022-01-18 Subtitle A Novel DEWEY 823.92 Audience General UK Release Date 2022-01-18 Publisher Simon & Schuster Imprint Simon & Schuster Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States US Release Date 2022-01-18 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:134254844;

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