The Vanishing Season - Joanna Schaffhausen

Written by Joanna Schaffhausen
Read by Lauren Fortgang
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Ellery Hathaway Series, Book 1
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Release date: December 5, 2017
Duration: 08:58:01

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.

“Lauren Fortgang narrates this suspenseful debut thriller. Ellery Hathaway, a small-town cop in Woodbury, Massachusetts, has a big secret. Unbeknownst to her community but revealed to listeners early on, Ellery, formerly Abigail, was kidnapped 14 years earlier by an infamous serial killer. FBI Agent Reed Markham cracked the case, and Ellery survived to start a new life. But now a series of disappearances in Woodbury could be connected to Ellery’s traumatic past, and she calls on Markham, who has his own issues, for help. Fortgang trips over a few accents but is otherwise effective. 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.”…. � AudioFile