GIRL, 11

Blending adrenaline-laced twists and emotional nuance with a master's hand, LIKE CLOCKWORK by A. Suiter Clarke is an unforgettable debut thriller for fans of Karin Slaughter and Jane Harper.

True-crime podcast host Elle Castillo has been obsessed with The Countdown Killer for decades. Twenty years ago TCK abruptly stopped kidnapping, after establishing a pattern of taking and murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. No one's ever known why - why he stopped with his eleventh victim, or why he followed that pattern to begin with. Now, thanks to her reputation for never giving up on justice, Elle's gotten a hot tip from someone who claims to have a break in the case, but when she goes to meet with the tipster, she finds him dead in his living room. Unlike many experts and armchair sleuths, Elle's never believed that TCK was dead, and guilty though she feels over this death, she's sure it means the tip, whatever it may have been, was on the right track. When a young girl is snatched from her bus stop (an eleven-year-old, just the right age if TCK was picking his pattern back up all these years later), Elle is sure that TCK is back in action. She's in a race against time to get the authorities - and her podcast audience - to believe her before the deadly series can claim its next victim. And then Elle gets the confirmation she never wanted when her best friend's ten-year-old daughter is the next girl to go missing. Elle realizes that she has to confront her secret connection to TCK - and admit it to everyone who's believed in her work so far - to stop the countdown before it's too late. A. Suiter Clarke is a full-time marketing communications specialist and novelist. She currently works as a communications specialist for the Deakin University library. In 2013, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing with Publishing from Kingston University, London. Her short stories have appeared in Ad Hoc Fiction, The Ram Boutique Vol. 1, the online literary magazine Storgy, and two Kingston University Press magazines. Originally from the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, she now lives in Melbourne, Australia