Indelible

Sometimes a past comes back to kill . . .

Two armed men enter the police station in tiny Heartsdale, Georgia, and open fire. When the shooting stops, an officer is dead, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver is seriously wounded, and the survivors—including a class of grade-school children and medical examiner Sara Linton—are held hostage. In a tense standoff that could erupt at any moment into more bloodletting—with her ex-husband on the threshold of death—Sara must search for answers and an escape in the memories of a time at the start of their relationship when another brutal, shocking crime shattered their small-town world. Because the sins of the past have caught up with Sara and Jeffrey . . . with a vengeance.

Two armed men enter the police station in tiny Heartsdale, Georgia, and open fire. When the shooting stops, an officer is dead, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver is seriously wounded, and the survivors — including a class of grade-school children and medical examiner Sara Linton — are held hostage. In a tense standoff that could erupt at any moment into more bloodletting — with her ex-husband on the threshold of death — Sara must search for answers and an escape in the memories of a time at the start of their relationship when another brutal, shocking crime shattered their small-town world. Because the sins of the past have caught up with Sara and Jeffrey ... with a vengeance.

The Washington Post - Dennis Drabelle

Throughout Indelible, Slaughter excels at pitting one strong character against another. A long conversation between Sara and her mother, as Sara gets ready to go off for a weekend with Jeffrey and her mother takes over the packing, epitomizes the blend of love, bossiness, resistance, banter and tenuous compromise that shapes relations between a tough-minded parent and a willful child. And in Slaughter's steady hands, the trajectory of Sara and Jeffrey's off-and-on romance is clear and convincing.

Karin Slaughter is the New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including Beyond Reach and A Faint Cold Fear, which was named an International Book of the Month Club selection; she contributed to and edited Like a Charm. She is a native of Georgia, where she currently lives and is working on her next novel, which Delacorte Press will publish in 2010.