A Twisted Ladder by Rhodi Hawk (Forge, 2009; will be released in mass market paperback in August 2010)
Dr. Madeleine LeBlanc thought she’d finally gotten her life in order. Daughter of a paranoid schizophrenic, she worked her way through school to become a clinical psychologist. But when her brother fires a shotgun into his head in a fishing boat out on Bayou Black, his death stirs echoes from a forgotten time.
Madeleine discovers her family’s abandoned sugar plantation along the Mississippi River, and with it a world when the antebellum era was crumbling, and the line between servant and master was starting to fade.
But she also uncovers a pattern of strange and sinister occurrences. Things that cast shadows of unexplainable phenomena.
But the more Madeleine explores, the deeper she becomes ensnared in a trap. Her only hope is to face the ghosts of the past, the dangers of the present day, and the twisted ladder that links them together.
Reviews for A Twisted Ladder
“A phenomenal novel, a thriller with characters that are intriguing and real, a sublime plot, and all the right ingredients. This is a fabulous first book from an author who knows how to tell a story. I see an incredible future for her.”– Heather Graham, New York Times bestselling author of The Death Dealer
“Eerie and evocative, A Twisted Ladder provides scares and surprises galore.”–Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of The Surgeon
“Rhodi Hawk has reshaped Southern Gothic and made it her own. Alternately lyrical and disturbing, majestic and profoundly creepy, A Twisted Ladder sings with an unabashed love of the South even while lifting its rocks to reveal the decay and darkness lurking beneath.” — F. Paul Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of the Reapirman Jack series
“Rhodi Hawk’s A Twisted Ladder is a novel of great power, a nasty Southern genre twister with a full dose of dark and light presented to us in fine controlled prose. It has all the great elements of Southern literature, but still manages to be be hip and hot underneath those Southern shadows. I haven’t been thisimpressed with a new writer in quite some time.”–Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar Award-winning author of The Bottoms
A Twisted Ladder by Rhodi Hawk (Forge, 2009; will be released in mass market paperback in August 2010)