Dark and Shallow Lies

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! ‘AN INTENSE AND BROODING THRILLER ’ – THE OBSERVER A intensely romantic and atmospheric thriller for young adults, full of twists and turns with a simmering supernatural undercurrent. Perfect for fans of Holly Jackson, Karen McManus and Delia Owens’ Where the Crawdads Sing When seventeen-year-old Grey makes her annual visit to La Cachette, Louisiana – the tiny bayou town that proclaims to be the “Psychic Capital of the World” – she knows it will be different from past years: her childhood best friend Elora went missing several months earlier and no one is telling the truth about the night she disappears. Grey can’t believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something—her grandmother Honey; her childhood crush Hart; and even her late mother, whose secrets continue to call to Grey from beyond the grave. When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou – a stormy-eyed boy with links to Elora and the town’s bloody history – Grey realizes that La Cachette’s past is far more present and dangerous than she’d ever understood. She doesn’t know who she can trust. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent—and La Cachette’s dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart.

‘Dark and Shallow Lies oozes atmosphere and dread […] An intense and brooding thriller laced with the supernatural and killer twists.’ – Observer ‘A page-turning thriller . . .’ – IRISH TIMES “Few books have stuck with me quite as much as Dark and Shallow Lies did this year. Like its ominous and isolated Louisiana bayou setting, Ginny Myers Sain’s debut YA novel is a story that’s as alluring as it is unnerving and unfathomable. Blending small-town supernatural thrills with a haunting coming-of-age murder mystery, it’s the kind of deeply atmospheric book that makes you live every second with its heart-breaking cast of young and troubled characters. Taking place, as Ginny Myers Sain describes it, in the “in-between spaces where magic feels most possible”, it’s a story that crackles off the page and into readers’ hearts, where it will stay for a long time to come.” Culturefly “Don’t even try to resist—Ginny Myers Sain will lure you into the spellbinding world of the deep Louisiana bayou with this riveting missing girl mystery populated by a bewitching cast of characters; spun to life in lush, atmospheric prose; and teeming with a dark mythology that is part folklore, part psychic mysticism, and entirely compelling.” —Kit Frick, author of I Killed Zoe Spanos “Haunting and arresting, this is one stunning debut. Ginny Myers Sain has written a totally engrossing small-town mystery about what happens when you finally dig up long-buried secrets.” —Jessica Goodman, bestselling author of They Wish They Were Us

Ginny Myers Sain enjoys creating dark, tangled, mysterious stories that exist in the in-between spaces where magic feels most possible. She especially loves writing for young adult readers because those years between childhood and adulthood are full of so much possibility…and so many big fears and questions. Ginny currently lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with her teenage son and a very cowardly doberman named Shipley. When she’s not working in the theatre or writing, you're likely to find her listening to true crime podcasts, taking pictures of alligators, eating tacos, or planning a trip to Walt Disney World.  Dark and Shallow Lies is her debut novel.

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