[ORIGINAL DRAFT SAMPLE] She is twenty-nine when the FBI comes for her, but Catherine Themis was only seventeen, grieving and naive and angry, the first time she wiped someone else's blood from her fingers and felt the snake rise in her chest. She was seventeen when she stepped into the dark and never looked back. ***** By day, Catherine Themis is an unassuming civilian administrator for the Dedwich Police Department, but by night, she is a notorious vigilante known as The Hangman. Struggling with her violent urges and the psychological cost of her actions, Catherine becomes the target of an obsessive serial killer and a relentless FBI agent, and as the hunt for the Hangman intensifies, Catherine must decide which life she wishes to live and what she values more: vengeance or her fading humanity? A psychological thriller in the vein of MINDHUNTER and HANNIBAL, SERPENT HEART is a deep-dive into the life and history of a conflicted vigilante forced to confront her inner demons and evade a national manhunt. Catherine questions the efficacy of her own convictions as the FBI closes in and a vindictive murderer puts her family, love, and identity in jeopardy. With everything on the line and time running out, who will Catherine Themis become? --- [[AVAILABLE ON AMAZON]] [[REMOVED 24 DEC 2021]] [[2019 Watty Winner - Mystery & Thriller]]

Bronwyn Larson has spent her whole life not depending on her mother, a constantly recovering addict, until the moment her life was literally torn apart when an EF4 tornado ripped through their trailer park and her mom is found dead, miles away after the storm. Suddenly, her estranged father is a part of her life, a prominent state senator who's been absent since Bronwyn was born, a product of her parents' secretive affair. After living alone with her mother in a trailer for seventeen years, Bronwyn now has a stepmother and four new siblings, including an older brother and sister who seem skeptical, if not actually disproving, of Bronwyn living with them. While staying with them in their vacation lake house an hour away from what she called home, Bronwyn is hit with the bombshell that her mother's death is being treated as suspicious, with injuries inconsistent of being killed during the tornado. Estranged from everyone she knows, except her estranged new family, Bronwyn doesn't know who trust or who to believe about her mother's death. Torn between her life as the daughter of a single drug addict and the middle child of a well-respected senator, all while learning more about the mother she thought she knew, Bronwyn is forced to navigate through this new unfamiliar life alone, with this gut feeling she has. That her mother's killer isn't unfamiliar. 𝐓𝐎 𝐁𝐄 𝐏𝐔𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐌𝐀𝐘 18th 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏 𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐏𝐀𝐃 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒 Cover designed by Ashley Bandy

The death, the life, and the recounting of Juliet.

When the charming Finn Anker ends up dead suspicions turn to the students of Wellridge Prep and the dangerous secrets that lurk within the school's halls. [Extended Summary Inside] © isacbv, 2018