Title: The Sham
Author:
Ellen Allen
Release
date: September 7th, 2014
Genre:
Young Adult Contemporary Thriller
Book
Description:
When love leads to death, be
careful who you trust…
Eighteen-year-old Emily Heath would
love to leave her dead-end town, known locally as "The Sham", with
her boyfriend, Jack, but he's very, very sick; his body is failing and his
brain is shutting down. He's also in hiding, under suspicion of murder. Six
months' ago, strange signs were painted across town in a dialect no one has
spoken for decades and one of Emily's classmates washed up in the local floods.
Emily has never trusted her
instincts and now they're pulling her towards Jack, who the police think is a
sham himself, someone else entirely. As the town wakes to discover new signs
plastered across its walls, Emily must decide who and what she trusts, and
fast: local vigilantes are hunting Jack; the floods, the police, and her
parents a
Book Excerpt:
Extract one: “We’d all smoked the same little something”
From chapter: Have you seen anything? Or
How dead bodies ‘melt out’ in spring
thaws
We all knew something was off. We could feel it, in about a million mammoth
ways. The classroom was buzzing, as if we hadn’t been able to cope with the
endless weeks of gloom. Like everything had been packed inside, so tight, for
so long, that something had to snap.
I took my usual seat, lollygagging in the middle of the
classroom, wondering if the bottom of my jeans would ever get dry. We were
still inundated with water but now from below, rather than above. The mammoth
influxes of snow had started to melt leaving us to navigate the puddles, pools
and streams left on every manmade surface. Becky and Rebecca were making a
triumphant return to school, sitting on desks at the back but I kept my
distance, wanting to keep well away. I smiled at a joke one of the boys made
but I didn’t make eye contact. I remembered something Jack had said. Seem engaged in what’s going on, but don’t
get involved or singled out. It seemed like good advice; an invisible boy
knows how to stay hidden.
I found a soggy breakfast muffin full of cold egg and
tinned tomatoes seeping into my textbooks that Mum must have sneaked into my
bag before I left the house. She can never remember I hate tomatoes, how many
sugars I have in my tea or that I haven’t eaten a Jaffa Cake since I was six.
Her memory is perpetually locked into my childhood patterns, pre-pills, before
pre-breakfast cocktails were the norm. I took a bite because I was too hungry
to mind or to worry about smelling out the classroom but I had a sense of
unease. The days Mum acts like a Mum, they’re never the best.
Like the day Grace finally died. My mother was sane,
motherly. Offering advice. Telling me I might want to think about not
going to see Grace in the funeral home. It’s
better to remember them living, she had said. Breathing, laughing. But I had to see for myself, say goodbye. And
now every hello I make to Grace, every memory I bring back to life begins with
the last one I have. Cold. Stony. Her hair in a style she would have hated. A
dress cherry-picked by her mother that made her look about ten. Like something
out of Anne of bloody Green Gables. Like I said. The days when Mum makes sense,
when I’m grateful for her efforts. Those never turn out well.
Everyone was making so much noise. It was like we had all
smoked the same little something before breakfast, inhaling the crazy. Kitty
was quite literally, begging,
“have you seen Me?”
She’d
suddenly appeared everywhere,
plastered all over school on posters the size of entire walls, her head eight
times its usual size. I couldn’t help thinking they were looking for the wrong
girl; she was barely recognisable from the picture they’d used; pre-make up,
pre-highlights, pre-pubescent. Maybe – if she’d been discarded outside, left to
rot like Cath – the hail and snow and wind and rain might have eroded all
adolescent traces, like a two-month outdoor facial for her face? Would they
draw the teenage mask back on like they did with Grace? A little mascara here,
a little hairspray there? As if it makes a difference.
I shimmied down inside my coat,
snuggling under my hood. I wasn’t sure if anyone there knew that Jack even
existed, never mind if they’d got wind of the police’s suspicions but I felt
tainted by association. It was as if Kitty was speaking directly to me,
pleading, Come and find me. I’m still okay. Nothing bad has happened.
Yet. But we all knew different. Not the details. We had 20 minutes to wait
for the hows, the where fors. 20 minutes for the puss to ooze through our
streets, beneath our school gates and classroom doors. Before the hysterics
really began.
About
the Author:
In a previous life, Ellen Allen was an Associate
Director in a small consultancy firm (focusing on Sustainable Development and
Climate Change) running research projects and writing client reports. She
doesn’t find fiction writing too dissimilar in process but she gets to use her
imagination considerably more! She now lives in the south of France with her
small daughter.
You can contact Ellen Allen on
twitter @EllenWritesAll or on
facebook www.facebook.com/EllenWritesAll.
Alternatively,
find her on Amazon or read her writing blog here: www.writingright.net.
Giveaway
Prize: 5 USD Amazon Gift Card
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