WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL THRILLER WRITERS AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
WINNER OF THE MCDERMID DEBUT AWARD FOR CRIME FICTION

Finding a dead body is not normal. But Ava is not a normal teenager. In this chillingly beautiful mystery, only the obsessive spirit of youth can save a desperate town from the savagery within.

Ava Bonney is a compassionate and studious fourteen-year-old girl with a dark secret: She has an obsessive interest in the macabre and is fascinated by how dead animals decompose. The highway she lives by regularly offers up gifts of roadkill, and in the dead of night Ava loves nothing more than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den and record her findings.

One night, she stumbles across the body of her classmate. Fearing that her secret ritual could be revealed, she makes an anonymous call to the police. But even when local detectives take over the case, Ava won’t step back—not while teenagers continue to go missing.

Racing alongside the police or against them, Ava is determined to figure out who is hunting her classmates before she becomes the next prey.