Thriller |
Mystery |
Suspense |
Fiction |
Summary
Summary
A Town in Mourning. A Murder in Waiting...
Blood stains the carpet of an empty house. A front door slams behind a mother with a suitcase full of secrets. Someone screams. A plane falls out of the sky.
What happened the night flight 2940 crashed? And is the shocking murder of a policeman's daughter somehow related to this tragic event--or is it simply a devastating coincidence?
Four people, who have never met but are permanently linked by these disasters, will be forced to reveal the closely guarded secrets that unlock the answers to these questions. But once the truth is exposed, it may cause even more destruction.
After We Fall weaves together the stories of those who lost something of themselves in a tragic incident and explores how swiftly everything can come crashing down.
A stunning combination of mystery, thriller, and suspense, After We Fall is an intense, complex, and emotional debut that will enthrall fans of Tana French, S.J Watson and Alice LaPlante.
What reviewers are saying about After We Fall
"Dark, tense and convincing, this is a brilliantly executed and engrossing thriller." --Sunday Mirror
"After We Fallis an intense, psychological thriller that delves into the lives of four unique individuals battling both secrets and loss. It's a book that will keep readers on the edge of their seats..."--Okie Dreams
"A book that you will enjoy and contemplate long after you have finished the last page."--Celtic Lady's Reviews
"After We Fall is a gripping thriller that will have readers on the edge of their seats and devouring every page."--A Dream Within a Dream
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Flight attendant Cecilia Williams, one of four troubled people whose lives intersect in Kavanagh's solid debut, has just abandoned her police detective husband, Tom Allison, and their two-year-old son, Ben, when bad weather causes the plane she's on to crash soon after takeoff from Cardiff, Wales, into a mountain village. Cecilia is one of the few survivors. Meanwhile, Tom investigates the murder of Libby Hanover, retired police superintendent Jim Hanover's grown daughter, and Freya, the young daughter of the pilot who died in the crash, tries to assuage the grief of her mother and grandparents. Kavanagh heightens the suspense by shifting among multiple points of view, though the anguish Cecilia goes through in reevaluating her life will strike some readers as melodramatic. Packed with high emotion, this novel about bad choices and vexed relationships reveals a born storyteller with room to grow. Agent: Camilla Wray, Darley Anderson Literary Agency (U.K.). (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1
Cecilia: Thursday, March 15, 6:08 p.m.
A shrieking of wind, screeching of metal as the plane ripped apart, the wicked cold tearing at her throat. Cecilia Williams gripped the seat, fingers burning with pain. She tried to close her mouth, but the sound pried it open, stealing her breath. A giant's hand pinned her to the bulkhead. Tumbling, tumbling...she couldn't determine the floor from the ceiling.
She couldn't see the people. Just black night air where there should have been a plane, space where there should have been seats. She squeezed her eyes shut. If she leaned this way, she could pretend she was sleeping.
The plane almost hadn't taken off at all. It had been touch and go. The air had thickened days ago, gray clouds massing as temperatures plummeted far below the March average. Then the snow, thick and bulbous. A blizzard, wrapping around Cardiff Airport, climbing into mountainous drifts. Flights canceled one after the other. Cecilia had no reason to believe that this flight would be any different. Except that it would be, because it had to be. Cecilia had sat in the crew room, sipping harsh black coffee, beads of sweat breaking out beneath her blunt-cut bangs as a potted ficus continued to wilt and die in the fierce heat charging from the radiators. She had pulled at her turquoise polyester jacket, letting it drop to the floor beside her. She hated that uniform. Saw the other flight attendants looking at the crumpled pile. Drank her coffee. She wouldn't wear that uniform again.
"Gonna cancel it, you think?" The copilot looked at her, running knuckled fingers through his curtained hair. Rope thin, all teeth and nostrils. He was new, coming in as she was going out. Cecilia didn't know his name, didn't really see the point in learning it, not now. She had handed in her notice. This would be her final flight. She stared out the window, watched the falling snow. She didn't answer.
"They'll cancel," the copilot mumbled, almost like he was whispering a prayer. "They'll cancel."
The pilot, Oliver Blake, glanced up at him, then back down. Staring at the ground. Jaw tight.
Made everyone tetchy, a night like this.
The plane kept tumbling, over, over. Seemed to be no end to it. There were things she should be doing as the wind whipped past her, the ground rushing closer. Her arms wanted to fold themselves over her head, mouth to scream, "Brace!" But she couldn't move her arms and she couldn't move her mouth, and the rest of her just didn't care. It would be over soon, anyway.
They had waited in the crew room, roll-on cases lining the wall in a chain gang. Cecilia's at the end, bigger than the rest. She blew on her coffee and thought about her diploma. She'd left it in a frame, displayed in the study that they used to hang laundry. She should have brought it. But then the interview wasn't for another month. Ground crew. She would be based out of London again, if she got the job. There would be a lot of applicants, would always be a lot of applicants for a job like that. But she had worked there before, and she knew people, and hopefully that would be enough. It didn't really matter about the diploma; she would have to speak to Tom again. Eventually.
"We'll never fly tonight. No chance." The copilot was working his jaw, teeth grinding against the hum of the radiators.
Cecilia had never thought she would want to go back to the chaos and the London smog and the phone-booth-red uniforms. Never thought that at thirty years old she would pack up her life, walk out on her husband and her almost three-year-old son. Something stuck in her throat, almost choking her. She had looked out the window at the snow and tried not to think about that.
She wondered if Tom knew that she had left, if he had found the closet door hanging open, all of her most prized belongings gone. She should have left a note. Should have done that at least.
The crew room phone rang, and they all looked up. Oliver pushed himself to his feet, trudging to the phone as though walking through a snowdrift.
Watching. Waiting.
He hung up the phone, turning back.
"We're on."
She hadn't kissed her son good-bye. She should have kissed him good-bye.
Then it was all hurry, hurry, hurry. She had grabbed her bags, a quick slick of lipstick even though her fingers were shaking, pulled her skirt straight, then click, clack, click, out into the terminal. Passengers' heads bobbed up like meerkats, the whisper running through the terminal in a bow wave behind them. Cecilia raised her chin and looked straight ahead.
Suddenly there was no time. It was a narrow window. There was more snow coming in. We go now or we don't go. And Cecilia very much wanted to go.
"Hello, hi, welcome, straight to the back, please." With a pasted smile, Cecilia gestured with French-tipped nails along the line of the plane. She bit her lip as they shuffled their way in, buffeting one against the other with their thick anoraks, all clumsy in heavy gloves. "If you could move out of the aisle, please." Smiling, smiling. "Let me help you with that." She moved alongside the Jude Law look-alike with his Armani shirt, open at the collar, and reached up to angle the carry-on into the overhead bin, not looking at the thin-lipped, flat-eyed woman who stood beside him.
Then the doors were shut and they were moving, and all eyes were on her as she pirouetted through the safety briefing. Smiling. Always smiling.
Trying not to smell the smoke rising from the bridges that she had burned behind her.
They were taxiing, building pressure pinning her to her seat. Cecilia turned her head, watching pinprick lights skittering against the dark night sky. She sighed. She had straightened her hair three times today, teasing the bangs that curled from the damp of the snow, pulling at it with fingers that trembled, ever so slightly, knowing that it would do no good. But doing it anyway, because it was better than thinking. Anything was better than that. Then the lift. Flickering lights giving way to black sea. A turn, climbing, climbing.
Cecilia leaned back in her seat. Was staring off into space when she realized someone was staring at her. The little girl was three, four maybe. Chocolate streaked across the tip of her nose, solemn jaw moving up and down. She was twisted around in her chair watching the flight attendant. She was beautiful. Dark eyes. Like Ben's.
Cecilia looked away.
They were climbing through the clouds. The plane shimmied, but she was looking at her reflection again, where the mascara had smudged. She was thinking about Ben's smell, his velvet skin, the way he slept with his mouth ever so slightly open, snoring a little boy's snore. She felt sick.
A murmur rippled through the cabin, and Cecilia glanced up, waiting for something, anything, so that she didn't have to think about the little boy she had left behind. The little girl had turned around, curling into her mother as they leafed through the pages of a book. But there were others glancing back at her. Cecilia tugged her shirt straight. An attractive girl, maybe twenty, maybe a little more, her oversized hoop earrings swinging, looked at Cecilia. It was like she wanted to say something, but she didn't, and, biting her lip, she lowered her eyes to look down into her lap where her hands twisted one inside the other.
Then the plane bucked. The murmur replaced with a "whoa" of riders on a roller coaster. Cecilia flung out her hand, bracing herself against the window.
"It's only crosswinds. Nothing to worry about." Her words were lost in the groaning of engines. But she said them again, whispering to herself.
The engines whirred, singing in an unfamiliar key. The girl with the hoop earrings was looking at her again, eyes wide, willing her to say something. Another buck. A high-pitched whining she hadn't heard before. There was nothing beyond the windows. A sea of gray cotton breaking into darkness.
The engine was straining, a dog pulling at its leash; they seemed to be tilting, not climbing, but pointing upward, steep, steeper than she had ever seen it. A solitary bottle of Dr Pepper had shaken itself loose from somewhere. It rolled down the aisle, rattling, bouncing, all eyes watching as it drifted to a stop at her feet. Then the chaos of noise vanished into a deafening silence.
And she knew.
She hadn't said good-bye to her son. She had stood on the threshold, where the murky blue glow of Ben's Toy Story night-light met the darkness of the hallway, and watched him sleep with his arms thrown up over his head, the way he had slept ever since he was a baby. And she had turned and walked away.
Someone screamed. Then they were falling.
Excerpted from After We Fall: A Novel by Emma Kavanagh All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.