The Forgotten Girl

Nominated for the 2018 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel.

A dark mystery unfolds in Rio Youers's riveting thriller, The Forgotten Girl.

Harvey Anderson is a twenty-six-year-old street performer from New Jersey. He enjoys his peaceful life, but everything turns upside down when he is abducted and beaten by a group of nondescript thugs. Working for a sinister man known as "the spider," these goons have spent nine years searching for Harvey's girlfriend, Sally Starling. Now they think they know where she lives. And whom she loves.

There's only one problem: Sally is gone and Harvey has no memory of her. Which makes no sense to him, until the spider explains that Sally has the unique ability to selectively erase a person's memories - an ability she has used to delete herself from Harvey's mind.

But emotion runs deeper than memory, and Harvey realizes he still feels something for Sally. And so - with the spider threatening - he goes looking for a girl he loves but can't remember . . . and encounters a danger that reaches beyond anything he could ever imagine.

Political corruption and manipulation. A serial killer's dark secrets. An appetite for absolute, terrible power. For Harvey Anderson, finding the forgotten girl comes at quite a cost.

Genre: Horror

"Rio Youers writes with a magic all his own. The Forgotten Girl is a unique and twisted thriller, loaded with suspense but also laced with beautiful heartbreak. Youers is a rare and original voice, and I can't wait to see what he does next!" - Christopher Golden

"Written with a brutal lyricism, a savage wit, and a killer instinct for suspense, it's a work that marks out Rio Youers as a big star." - Joe Hill

"A page-turner of a novel with concepts that twist your mind, characters that tug at your heartstrings, and a narrative that leaves you breathless. The Forgotten Girl is a supernatural thriller that will ensure you never forget Rio Youers." - Sarah Pinborough

"Rio Youers is one of the most vital, most exciting young talents to come along in this decade . . . [He] writes beautiful phrases and sentences, and he has an instinctive feel for horror's flash points, those moments in a novel when its author must demonstrate that he can keep his head while his readers are cheerfully losing theirs." - Peter Straub

"The Forgotten Girl has everything going for it. Rio Youers has seasoned an original plot with engaging, unpredictable characters, and a totally badass villain, concocting a heady thrill-fest that will keep you turning pages into the wee hours." - F Paul Wilson