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BLACK-EYED SUSANS by Julia Heaberlin

"BLACK-EYED SUSANS is a suspenseful page turner of the best kind!"

By: Julia Heaberlin

Genres: Suspense

Posted: July 27, 2015

In 1995, sixteen-year-old Tessa Cartwright was thrown into a grave, barely alive, along with three dead girls. The killing field they were dumped in was filled with the yellow wildflowers known as Black-Eyed Susans, which later becomes the murder victims' moniker. Tessa's testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row.

Present day: Tessa is a single parent of a fourteen-year-old daughter. She's done everything to put her horrific past behind her. But the man convicted of the Black-Eyed Susan murders is due to be executed soon. He says he's innocent, and some people believe he's telling the truth. There are people who believe him when and they want Tessa's help. She would like to help but she cannot remember a lot about that time, and what she remembers is not completely reliable. Even worse, she has also started to believe that he is innocent.

You see, someone has been leaving Black-Eyed Susans in various places for her. If her captor is in prison, how can he be responsible? Joining the team to help prove his innocence leads her down a dark and frightening road for the truth, which just may also be deadly.

BLACK-EYED SUSANS is a suspenseful page turner of the best kind! Told in both the past and the present, the story is mesmerizing. In many ways, it feels like reading someone's diary as personal thoughts and feelings are revealed, but with vital portions missing. The fragility of Tessa's character also brings out her strengths as she fights her way into the past. She is a good person; damaged, but good. It is because of this that she certainly does not want the wrong man executed, especially as she had a lot to do with putting him in prison.

You become a part of Tessa's search for the truth while she also fights for her sanity. BLACK-EYED SUSANS is written in such a tantalizing way that you will be hard pressed to stop reading until you also have the answers. There is a bit of everything here--mystery, terror, suspense and romance. The ending is shocking, jaw dropping, and one you never see coming. In short, BLACK-EYED SUSANS is a book to be relished!

Book Summary

For fans of Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn comes an electrifying novel of stunning psychological suspense.

I am the star of screaming headlines and campfire ghost stories. I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans. The lucky one.

As a sixteen-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive amid a scattering of bones, with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan,” the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessa’s testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row.

Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February, she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans—a summertime bloom—just outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implications—that she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at large—Tessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough, and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories—and to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue.

What they don’t know is that Tessa and the scared, fragile girl she was have built a fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free, taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night.

Shocking, intense, and utterly original, Black-Eyed Susans is a dazzling psychological thriller, seamlessly weaving past and present in a searing tale of a young woman whose harrowing memories remain in a field of flowers—as a killer makes a chilling return to his garden.

Read an Excerpt

Black-Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin

Black-Eyed Susans

by: Julia Heaberlin

Ballantine
August 1, 2015
On Sale: August 11, 2015
Featuring: Tessa Cartwright
368 pages
ISBN: 0804177996
EAN: 9780804177993
Kindle: B00P5557PI
Hardcover / e-Book

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