Marna was just your average american woman, or at least, as normal a famous writer can get. She loved the seaside, rivers, lakes, anyplace near water. She was purely happy, until the day her father, a man who left her and her mother, gives her a call. Telling her to move to Sweden, she packs her bags and stays with a young Swedish cafe owner in one of Sweden's little towns, called Mangata.
After taking a swim in the town's lake and nearly drowning because of a myth the town believes in, strange things happen to her. A man standing over her at midnight, getting slightly-webbed hands, and the locals whispering about something. Something old and ancient. And angry.
On the day she affords a beach house near the woods, the young cafe owner, Elsa, gets her cafe burned down. Marna lets Elsa stay. And when she goes on a walk in the woods, a young man bumps into her, afraid, alone and broken. She brings him home, only to discover he has no clue about the modern world, and likes to stay in the bathroom longer than a person should. Who and what is he and can she help him, or will this all fall apart?
When Jane Madarang's neighbor Natalie kills herself and leaves behind cryptic instructions, it's up to Jane and her classmates to unearth deadly secrets.
*****
Natalie Driscoll is dead.
She threw herself out a window and left her neighbor Jane to unravel their town's darkest secrets. Following Natalie's instructions leads Jane to three other high school students who all have something to hide. The four of them must carry out Natalie's final errand while solving the mysteries written in her diary. But the secrets they unearth may be far more dangerous than what they ever imagined.
Content and/or trigger warning: This story contains scenes of suicide, violence and murder that may be triggering for some readers.
[[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]