‘Some cages have keys. Others have daughters.’
She brought four women down the stairs. One of them never came all the way out.
For a year, Nell and her sister Dana lived behind three locks in two small rooms over a hardware shop. They made toast soldiers at four in the morning, checked the deadbolts, and tried to believe they were finally safe.
Then the street buzzer goes at 4:00 a.m.
On the frozen step lies a small square parcel wrapped in brown paper. Inside: a bright new brass nameplate stamped CORA—the first woman Nell ever rescued—and a Polaroid of Cora asleep in a bed with clean sheets.
Cora didn't get taken by force. She went back. Because you can take the woman out of the house, but getting the house out of the woman is a war of a lifetime.
And someone wanted Nell to know she was back inside.
To save her, Nell must go off-grid and follow a paper trail to Aldemere—a grand, unmapped estate hidden behind a razor-straight hedge in a pretty nothing town that has agreed, for sixty years, not to see what happens up the lane.
Posing as a vulnerable runaway, Nell walks up the raked gravel drive and lets the machine pick her up.
Inside, she finds a house that is patiently, kindly beginning to take her name. She finds a cellar engraver cutting brass plates for new inventory. And at the top of the stairs, behind the one door that locks from the inside, a lamp is lit—and a shadow from her family's past is waiting to welcome Ruth's daughter home.
Rule Number One: Always know the second way out before you sit down.
When the night explodes and the front door swings open on the worst night of Nell's life, she is about to discover that everyone in Aldemere is playing two games at once—and the person standing in the doorway is the last one on earth she expected to see.
Dark, atmospheric, and heart-stoppingly tense, The Second Way Out is the explosive second book in The Rules of Survival psychological thriller series. Perfect for readers who devour dark family secrets, locked-room suspense, and fierce female protagonists.
Genre: Mystery
She brought four women down the stairs. One of them never came all the way out.
For a year, Nell and her sister Dana lived behind three locks in two small rooms over a hardware shop. They made toast soldiers at four in the morning, checked the deadbolts, and tried to believe they were finally safe.
Then the street buzzer goes at 4:00 a.m.
On the frozen step lies a small square parcel wrapped in brown paper. Inside: a bright new brass nameplate stamped CORA—the first woman Nell ever rescued—and a Polaroid of Cora asleep in a bed with clean sheets.
Cora didn't get taken by force. She went back. Because you can take the woman out of the house, but getting the house out of the woman is a war of a lifetime.
And someone wanted Nell to know she was back inside.
To save her, Nell must go off-grid and follow a paper trail to Aldemere—a grand, unmapped estate hidden behind a razor-straight hedge in a pretty nothing town that has agreed, for sixty years, not to see what happens up the lane.
Posing as a vulnerable runaway, Nell walks up the raked gravel drive and lets the machine pick her up.
Inside, she finds a house that is patiently, kindly beginning to take her name. She finds a cellar engraver cutting brass plates for new inventory. And at the top of the stairs, behind the one door that locks from the inside, a lamp is lit—and a shadow from her family's past is waiting to welcome Ruth's daughter home.
Rule Number One: Always know the second way out before you sit down.
When the night explodes and the front door swings open on the worst night of Nell's life, she is about to discover that everyone in Aldemere is playing two games at once—and the person standing in the doorway is the last one on earth she expected to see.
Dark, atmospheric, and heart-stoppingly tense, The Second Way Out is the explosive second book in The Rules of Survival psychological thriller series. Perfect for readers who devour dark family secrets, locked-room suspense, and fierce female protagonists.
Genre: Mystery
Used availability for T R Sloane's The Second Way Out