It all started when we found the body. Then nothing was ever the same. The Dry meets Stand by Me and True Detective in this stunningly written tale of the darkness at the heart of a small mid-Western town and the four kids who uncover it. In the heatwave summer of 1971, four kids find a body by a lake and set out to solve a murder. But they dig too deep and ask too many questions. Larson is a town reeling in the wake of the Vietnam draft, where the unrelenting heat ruins the harvest, and the people teeter on the edge of ruin. As tension and paranoia run rife, rumours become fact, violence becomes reflex. The unrest allows the dark elements of the close-knit farming community to rise and take control. And John, Jenny, Gloria and Rudy are about to discover that sometimes secrets are best left uncovered...

True Grit meets The Road in this postapocalyptic psychological thriller--narrated by a young girl who has just learned that her adopted father may be a serial killer, and that she may be his next victim.Everything Elka knows of the world she learned from the man she calls father, the solitary hunter who took her under his wing when she was just seven years old. He has taught her how to shoot, track, set snares, and start fires--all the skills she needs to survive in a frozen, lawless land where civilization has been destroyed and men are at the mercy of the elements and each other. But the man Elka thought she knew so well is harboring a terrible secret. He's a killer. A monster. And now that Elka knows the truth, she too is in danger. Armed with nothing but her knife and the survival skills he's taught her, Elka makes her escape and sets out on a journey to the frozen north in the hope of finding her long-lost parents. But...