With Halloween upon us, I’m excited to share a sneak peek at Lies on the Serpent’s Tongue, an upcoming YA horror romance thriller by Kate Pearsall! Set to release January 7, 2025, readers are invited to return to Caball Hollow, the hauntingly atmospheric setting from last year’s Bittersweet in the Hollow. This time, to follow James’s daughter, Rowan, as she embarks on a chilling new adventure.
As Caball Hollow slowly recovers after a tumultuous summer, the James family must also come to terms with their own newly revealed secrets. 18-year-old Rowan James has spent her whole life harboring unpleasant truths—that’s what happens when you can smell people’s lies—and building walls around herself to block them out. Like her younger sister, Linden, who can taste the feelings of others, Rowan has long resented her gift, which has taught her that everyone lies, and no one is who they seem to be. So, when her old nemesis, Hadrian Fitch, the biggest liar of them all, shows up on her front porch—bloodied, broken, and asking for help only she can give—her first instinct is distrust. But something new is stalking the Forest that surrounds Caball Hollow. Now things are disappearing. At first, it’s small stuff—like letters, photos, and keys. But then, Rowan notices people around her are losing their memories. And when the body of a neighbor is found in the middle of town, Rowan knows there’s a link between this death and all the events disturbing the Hollow. Can she find what—or who—the link is before it takes another life?
Chapter Seven
I turn to look at the door, standing wide open with my pack in front it. Just beyond, I can see the edge of the approaching storm. A rim of thick clouds as dark as night. In two long strides, I cross the room and bolt the lock.
Thunder rumbles off in the distance, and the wind kicks up, howling ominously between the trees. Low pressure makes the air heavy with anticipation, sending birds to find refuge, insects to fly low to the ground on weighted wings, and worms to flee rising groundwater. It’s a silence like the inhale before the howl.
A big gust blows across the ridge, and something strikes the wall with a thud. I move back away from the door. And that’s when I hear it. A footstep just outside, I’m almost sure. Though that’s not exactly right. It was more of a shuffle than a step. It could have just been the leaves, blowing in the walkway. The silence that follows isn’t proof nothing is there. It’s the opposite. And I know I’m no longer alone. Something, or someone is out there. My breath comes faster as I strain to hear. A muted thud. Then a crash against the door hard enough to make it shudder in its frame. I race to the woodstove and reach for the metal poker.
There’s no one to call for help. No one who could get here before a person determined enough could break through the flimsy piece of old wood standing between us. There’s only me. Holding the poker over my shoulder like a baseball player at bat, I slide back the lock and yank open the door. There, lying across the doormat like something the cat dragged in, is a bloodied and unconscious Hadrian Fitch.
In rural Caball Hollow, surrounded by the vast National Forest, the James women serve up more than fried green tomatoes at the Harvest Moon diner, where the family recipes are not the only secrets.
Like her sisters, Linden was born with an unusual ability. She can taste what others are feeling, but this so-called gift soured her relationship with the vexingly attractive Cole Spencer one fateful night a year ago . . . A night when Linden vanished into the depths of the Forest and returned with no memories of what happened, just a litany of questions--and a haze of nightmares that suggest there's more to her story than simply getting lost.
Now, during the hottest summer on record, another girl in town is gone, and the similarities to last year's events are striking. Except, this time the missing girl doesn't make it home, and when her body is discovered, the scene unmistakably spells murder.
As tempers boil over, Linden enlists the help of her sisters to find what's hiding in the forest . . . before it finds her. But as she starts digging for truth--about the Moth-Winged Man rumored to haunt the Hollow, about her bitter rift with Cole, and even about her family--she must question if some secrets are best left buried.
Kate Pearsall is a creative thinker, an award-winning copywriter, and a storyteller. She has a degree in business and public relations and has written for magazines and newspapers. Bittersweet in the Hollow and Lies on the Serpent's Tongue were inspired in part by a childhood listening to her mom’s stories about growing up in the Appalachian Mountains and visiting family in West Virginia.
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