City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

The sleeper lies, Andrea Miles

eng

no index present

fiction

The sleeper lies

Andrea Miles

I step forward, breathing fast. Movement. I force myself to take another step. I think about all of it, all of the deaths and all of the accidents and all of the pain. And I know what I need to do. It's March 2018, and the country is covered in snow. Roads are impassable, shops are running out of food, and official advice is to stay indoors. Marianne lives on her own and works from home, so this isn't a problem. Until she wakes one morning in her house in the middle of nowhere and finds footprints trailing all across her garden. Half-asleep, she is at first curious. Then she realises the footprints stop at her bedroom window, and curiosity gives way to unease. Who was looking in at her, while she was asleep? As the big freeze worsens and the stalker begins to leave disturbing mementoes, Marianne's thoughts go back two decades to the schoolyard outburst that tore her childhood apart. Old feuds resurface, and the mystery of her mother's death is pulled back into focus. Marianne begins to see patterns - is there a link between her stalker and the true crime story she's been obsessively researching, or does the answer lie closer to home? In the end, 24 days is all it takes for everything to come crashing down