Devils of Forsythe

What Cora remembers could save her life . . . or set their world ablaze.In 1916, as war rages in Europe, the American Steel Belt’s melting pot simmers with industry and intolerance, primed to boil over if anyone turns up the heat.Ada Reilly is no stranger to prejudice; as the first and only woman practicing law in her city, she confronts it daily while clawing out a toehold in a profession dominated by men. So when a prominent couple is murdered and their youngest daughter, nineteen-year-old Cora Blanden, is found blood‑soaked and catatonic at the scene, Ada doesn’t need to be asked twice: she dives headlong into the case of the decade.The press sensationalizes the tragedy, and Cora’s sister, Lydia, is happy to sate the city’s desire for scapegoats. But Ada won’t be a pawn in Lydia’s games. As she navigates the animus engulfing the city and works to unearth the truth buried within Cora’s vacant stares, Ada finds an unlikely guide in the Blandens’ young housemaid, Bess. From her place in the shadows, Bess had an unfettered view of the venerable family’s unraveling: the zealotry that governed the household, the sadness that clings to Cora like a shroud . . . and the darkness that haunted Cora’s childhood.Eerie, lyrical, and unflinching, Quillen deBruney (Child of June) plunges readers into a world where trauma is mistaken for madness and the line between protector and predator constantly blurs. 6