Mystery / Thriller
Chasing Shadows
She lived in the light. He only ever had the shadows.
Eliot has never belonged anywhere like Gerald Ashworth's. A high-school English teacher who splurges on rainbow sprinkles for his own birthday, he drives his rusting Corolla up a fog-bound hill toward a Tudor mansion lit like a theatre — because Rose asked him to come.
Rose runs the kind of glittering charity galas Eliot has only ever read about. She is poised, magnetic, and engaged to a man named David, whose firm has just won a government contract no one will explain — and she has begun, quietly, to look for Eliot in the lonely rooms of her life. Tonight she wants to show him a library of signed first editions and teach him to dance before the song runs out.
But the glitter is only a surface, and not everyone in these rooms is merely playing. As the evening turns, Eliot glimpses the cold machinery beneath Rose's world — and the price of wanting something this far above him. Chasing Shadows is a literary thriller about class, longing, and how far an ordinary man will follow the light before the shadows close behind him.
- Publication
- [ On-sale date TBA ]
- Publisher
- [ Publisher ]
- Pages
- [ TBA ]
- ISBN
- [ ISBN TBA ]
- Genre
- Mystery / Thriller
An Excerpt
November fog shrouded the mansion at the top of the hill as Eliot drove up the winding gravel drive, his headlights boring pale holes into the gray.
The invitation lay on the passenger seat beside him, gold-leafed and absurdly heavy, as if wealth itself had somehow been pressed into the fibers.
Rose had called the party boring. A birthday celebration for some impossibly rich old man, she had said — dismissing the whole thing with a wave of her hand, as though boredom were the worst a house like this could do.
But the mansion kept rising through the fog.
And somewhere inside was Rose.
“An assured, atmospheric debut — the kind of party you can't bring yourself to leave, even once you know you should.”
— [ Placeholder — add a real review ]
“Gorgeous and quietly menacing. Ashworth's mansion is a cage of candlelight, and everyone inside is hiding a wound.”
— [ Placeholder — add a real blurb ]
“A love story with a knife somewhere in the room. I held my breath for the last hundred pages.”
— [ Placeholder — add a real endorsement ]
Content Notes
Offered for readers who like to know before they open the door:
- Longing for someone in a committed relationship
- An emotionally cold, controlling partner
- Class and wealth disparity
- Suspense and implied danger
Claim your copy
Coming Soon — [ On-sale date TBA ]. Choose your format and your door.
Print · Coming Soon
eBook · Coming Soon
Audio · Coming Soon
Or ask for it by name at your local bookshop.