num_pages: 354
description: For fans of Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn comes an electrifying novel of stunning psychological suspense.I am the star of screaming headlines and campfire ghost stories.I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans.The lucky one. As a sixteen-year-old Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field barely alive amid a scattering of bones with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since the press has pursued her as the lone surviving Black-Eyed Susan the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessas testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row. Now almost two decades later Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susansa summertime bloomjust outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implicationsthat she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at largeTessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memoriesand to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue. What they dont know is that Tessa and the scared fragile girl she was have built a fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution Tessa fears for her sanity but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night. Shocking intense and utterly original Black-Eyed Susans is a dazzling psychological thriller seamlessly weaving past and present in a searing tale of a young woman whose harrowing memories remain in a field of flowersas a killer makes a chilling return to his garden.
language: English
title: Black-Eyed Susans
publisher: Ballantine Books