ANGELS BURNING

ANGELS BURNING is a fast-paced literary thriller in the vein of Tana French about a detective investigating the murder of a teenage girl from a dirt poor family in town, who finds herself being forced to look into her past and dig up demons she buried years before.

On the surface, Police Chief Dove Carnahan is a true trailblazer who would do anything to protect the rural Pennsylvanian township where she was born, raised and has lived all her forty-nine years. Traditional and proud of her blue-collar roots—in spite of judgments from the rich neighboring town—Dove is loved by her community with fellow officers who liken her to a kind of den mother. But beneath her badge lies a dark and self-destructive streak, fed by a secret she has kept since she was sixteen when her mother was found in their bathtub, murdered.

Soon after a local girl's body is discovered stuffed inside a fiery sinkhole in the abandoned coal town bordering her own, the boyfriend convicted of killing Dove’s mother is released from jail, still swearing his innocence and seeking answers from the daughter who claims he was there on the night that her gold-digging mother was drowned. The girl who was murdered is the daughter of a dirt poor family in town, ingrained with bitterness born from constant degradation, and as Dove attempts to find her killer, she is forced to look into her past and dig up demons she buried years before.

In this masterfully told psychological thriller, the past and present collide to reveal the morally reprehensibly acts some commit to escape unwanted circumstance, and in turn, the crimes committed to push them back to where they began.

Tawni O'Dell is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels including Back Roads, which was an Oprah's Book Club pick and a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection. She is also a contributor to several anthologies, including Becoming Myself: Reflections on Growing Up Female. Her works have been published in over 40 countries. Tawni was born and raised in the coal-mining region of western Pennsylvania, the territory she writes about with such striking authenticity. She graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and spent many years living in the Chicago area before moving back to Pennsylvania where she now lives.