Sheena Kamal

The Lost Ones

The Beauty of the Moment meets Exit, Pursued by a Bear. Award-winning thriller writer Sheena Kamal delivers a kick-ass debut YA novel that will have fans crying out for more. Love and violence. In some families they're bound up together, dysfunctional and poisonous, passed from generation to generation like eye color or a quirk of smile. Trisha's trying to break the chain, channeling her violent impulses into Muay Thai kickboxing, an unlikely sport for a slightly built girl of Trinidadian descent. Her father comes and goes as he pleases, his presence adding a layer of tension to Toronto's east-end townhouse Trisha and her mom call home, every punch he lands on her mother carving itself indelibly into Trisha's mind. Until the night he wanders out drunk in front of the car Trisha is driving, practicing on her learner's permit, her mother in the passenger seat. Her father is killed, and her mother seems strangely at peace. Lighter, somehow. Trisha doesn't know exactly what happened that night, but she's afraid it's going to happen again. Her mom has a new man in her life and the patterns, they are repeating.

Fight Like a Girl

The brilliant, fearless, deeply flawed Nora Watts—introduced in the "utterly compelling" (Jeffery Deaver) atmospheric thriller The Lost Ones—finds deadly trouble as she searches for the truth about her late father in this immersive thriller that moves from the hazy Canadian Pacific Northwest to the gritty, hollowed streets of Detroit. Growing up, Nora Watts only knew one parent—her father. When he killed himself, she denied her grief and carried on with her life. Then a chance encounter with a veteran who knew him raises disturbing questions Nora can’t ignore—and dark emotions she can’t control. To make her peace with the past, she has to confront it. Finding the truth about her father’s life and his violent death takes her from Vancouver to Detroit where Sam Watts grew up, far away from his people and the place of his birth. Thanks to a disastrous government policy starting in the 1950s, thousands of Canadian native children like Sam were adopted by American families. In the Motor City, Nora discovers that the circumstances surrounding Sam’s suicide are more unsettling than she’d imagined. Yet no matter how far away Nora gets from Vancouver, she can’t shake trouble. Back in the Pacific Northwest, former police detective turned private investigator Jon Brazuca is looking into the overdose death of a billionaire’s mistress. His search uncovers a ruthless opiate ring and a startling connection to Nora, the infuriatingly distant woman he’d once tried to befriend. He has no way to warn or protect her, because she’s become a ghost, vanishing completely off the grid. Focused on the mysterious events of her father’s past and the clues they provide to her own fractured identity and that of her estranged daughter, Nora may not be able to see the danger heading her way until it’s too late. But it’s not her father’s old ties that could get her killed—it’s her own.

A Novel

It All Falls Down

Eyes Like Mine

"From Strand Critics Award winner Sheena Kamal, comes the third novel featuring the brilliant, fearless, deeply flawed Nora Watts whose vendetta against a triad enforcer escalates when he places a target on her daughter's back."--Publisher's description.

No Going Back

On a surveillance assignment for a child custody case, PI-in-training Nora Watts finds herself ensconced in a small farming community on a beautiful hippie island in the Pacific Northwest, a place with a reputation for being welcoming to outsiders. But when she arrives there, she discovers her welcome quickly wears thin. Perhaps too quickly. Salt Spring Island, with a history as a refuge for African Americans fleeing the bonds of slavery, is not a place of refuge for her—and, she suspects, may not be for the people who live there, either. As she investigates, nothing about this remote community seems to add up. It gets personal as Nora confronts her own complicated feelings toward her estranged daughter and becomes increasingly concerned about the child she’s been tasked to surveil. She discovers that small, idyllic communities can hide very big secrets. Included with this short story is a sneak peek at the next Nora Watts novel from Sheena Kamal, It All Falls Down

In The Grip Of It

A BUSTLE BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH TIME MAGAZINE SUMMER READ RECOMMEND Finalist for the International Thriller Writers, Strand Critics, and Barry Award for Best First Novel "A brave, unflinching heroine and brave, unflinching writing add up to an extraordinary debut--highly recommended."--Lee Child A dark, compulsively readable psychological suspense debut, the first in a new series featuring the brilliant, fearless, chaotic, and deeply flawed Nora Watts—a character as heartbreakingly troubled, emotionally complex, and irresistibly compelling as Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander and Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole. It begins with a phone call that Nora Watts has dreaded for fifteen years—since the day she gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. Bonnie has vanished. The police consider her a chronic runaway and aren’t looking, leaving her desperate adoptive parents to reach out to her birth mother as a last hope. A biracial product of the foster system, transient, homeless, scarred by a past filled with pain and violence, Nora knows intimately what happens to vulnerable girls on the streets. Caring despite herself, she sets out to find Bonnie with her only companion, her mutt Whisper, knowing she risks reopening wounds that have never really healed—and plunging into the darkness with little to protect her but her instincts and a freakish ability to detect truth from lies. The search uncovers a puzzling conspiracy that leads Nora on a harrowing journey of deception and violence, from the gloomy rain-soaked streets of Vancouver, to the icy white mountains of the Canadian interior, to the beautiful and dangerous island where she will face her most terrifying demon. All to save a girl she wishes had never been born.

Timothy Taylor

Linda L. Richards

This “excellent anthology” of noir fiction set in Canada’s City of Glass features all-new stories by Linda L. Richards, Sam Wiebe, Yasuko Thanh and more (Quill & Quire, starred review). For many people, Vancouver is a city of affluence, athleisure, and craft beer. But if look a little closer at this gentrified paradise, you’ll find the old saying holds true: behind every fortune there’s a crime. Hidden beneath Vancouver’s gleaming glass skyscrapers are shadowy streets where poverty, drugs, and violence rule the day. These fourteen stories of crime and mayhem in the Pacific Northwest offer an entertaining “mix of wily pros, moody misfits, bewildered bystanders, and a touch of the supernatural” (Kirkus). Vancouver Noir features the Arthur Ellis Award-winning story “Terminal City” by Linda L. Richards, and the Arthur Ellis Award-finalist “Wonderful Life” by Sam Wiebe. It also includes entries by Timothy Taylor, Sheena Kamal, Robin Spano, Carleigh Baker, Dietrich Kalteis, Nathan Ripley, Yasuko Thanh, Kristi Charish, Don English, Nick Mamatas, S.G. Wong, and R.M. Greenaway.

Vancouver Noir

The Beauty of the Moment meets Exit, Pursued by a Bear. Award-winning thriller writer Sheena Kamal delivers a kick-ass debut YA novel that will have fans crying out for more. Love and violence. In some families they're bound up together, dysfunctional and poisonous, passed from generation to generation like eye color or a quirk of smile. Trisha's trying to break the chain, channeling her violent impulses into Muay Thai kickboxing, an unlikely sport for a slightly built girl of Trinidadian descent. Her father comes and goes as he pleases, his presence adding a layer of tension to the Toronto east-end townhouse that Trisha and her mom call home, every punch he lands on her mother carving itself indelibly into Trisha's mind. Until the night he wanders out drunk in front of the car Trisha is driving, practicing on her learner's permit, her mother in the passenger seat. Her father is killed, and her mother seems strangely at peace. Lighter, somehow. Trisha doesn't know exactly what happened that night, but she's afraid it's going to happen again. Her mom has a new man in her life and the patterns, they are repeating.

'Utterly compelling . . . Will stay with you for a long, long time' Jeffery Deaver

A People Magazine Best New Book Pick Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by CrimeReads, LitHub, and Book Riot! “If you’re looking for a dark, moody, complex thriller with a complex woman protagonist this is your series. I love love love these books."--Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger From Strand Critics Award winner Sheena Kamal, comes the third novel featuring the brilliant, fearless, deeply flawed Nora Watts whose vendetta against a triad enforcer escalates when he places a target on her daughter's back. Find your enemy. Before he finds you. Nora Watts has a talent for seeing what lies beneath strangers’ surfaces, and for knowing what they’re working hard to keep hidden. Somehow, it’s the people closest to her she has trouble truly connecting with. In the case of Bonnie, the teenage daughter Nora gave up for adoption, she has to keep trying. For Bonnie has a target on her back—and it’s all because of Nora. Two years ago, Bonnie was kidnapped by the wealthy Zhang family. Though Nora rescued her, she made a powerful enemy in Dao, a mysterious triad enforcer and former head of the Zhangs’ private security. Now Dao is out for revenge, and she needs to track him down in order to keep herself—and Bonnie—safe. On Dao’s trail, Nora forms an unlikely partnership with Bernard Lam, an eccentric playboy billionaire with his own mysterious grudge to bear, and reunites with Jon Brazuca, ex-cop turned private investigator and Nora’s occasional ally. From Canada to southeast Asia they pursue Dao, uncovering a shadowy criminal cabal. But soon, the trail will lead full circle to Vancouver, the only home Nora’s ever known, and right to the heart of her brutal past.

O telefone toca passados apenas cinco minutos das cinco da manhã... Nunca tinha ouvido falar do nome Everett Walsh antes, contudo, segundo a pessoa que me ligou, poderei saber alguma coisa sobre uma miúda desaparecida. Embora não me diga o quê. Ainda considero a hipótese de não me encontrar com ele, mas parecia desesperado e, se há coisa que me atrai mais numa pessoa do que a persistência, é o desespero. Apesar de encontrar pessoas fazer parte da forma como ganho a vida, o que poderia eu saber sobre uma miúda desaparecida que justificasse uma chamada a esta hora? Tudo começa com uma chamada telefónica que Nora Watts receou durante quinze anos — desde o dia em que deu a sua filha recém-nascida para adoção. Bonnie desapareceu. A polícia considera-a uma fugitiva crónica e não anda à procura dela, levando os pais adotivos a procurar, como última esperança, a mãe biológica. Resultado de uma relação multirracial e proveniente de instituições de acolhimento, transiente, sem-abrigo, apavorada pelo seu passado repleto de dor e violência, e amaldiçoada com uns intimidantes olhos escuros que absorvem toda a luz circundante — e com a capacidade de penetrar bem fundo na alma de uma pessoa — Nora sabe intimamente o que acontece a raparigas vulneráveis na rua...

Os perdidos

Nora Watts ist die perfekte Jägerin - als ehemaliges Mitglied der Canadian Forces hat sie ein untrügliches Gespür für Lügen. Sie ist die beste Privatdetektivin Kanadas. Doch ihr Leben ist hart, immer wieder verfällt sie dem Alkohol. Sie vertraut niemandem, lebt heimlich in einer Abstellkammer unter dem Detektivbüro in Vancouver und spricht nur mit ihrer Hündin Whisper. Bis ein Paar sie um ihre Hilfe bittet. Ihre Tochter Bonnie ist verschwunden. Nora stellt entsetzt fest, dass es sich um ihre eigene, vor fünfzehn Jahren zur Adoption freigegebene Tochter handelt. Nur wenn sie sich jetzt zum ersten Mal wieder den Menschen öffnet, kann sie sie retten. Aber Bonnies Entführer sind auch hinter ihr her, und bald wird die Jägerin zur Gejagten ... »Extrem spannend, mit ganz eigener Stimme, psychologischer Tiefe und herzzerreißend lebensnahen Figuren. Untiefen bleibt im Gedächtnis, noch lange nachdem man die letzte Seite gelesen hat. Vielleicht für immer.« Jeffery Deaver »Eine mutige, unbeirrbare Heldin und eine mutige, unbeirrbare Schreibweise ergänzen sich zu einem außergewöhnlichen Debüt – höchst empfehlenswert.« Lee Child

Untiefen

A számtalan hibájával együtt is zseniális és félelmet nem ismerő Nora Watts nyomozó – akit a lebilincselő thrillerben, Az elveszettekben ismerhettünk meg – halálos veszedelembe keveredik, miközben néhai apjáról igyekszik kideríteni az igazságot. Sok évvel apja, Sam tragikus halála után egy véletlen találkozás nyugtalanító kérdéseket vet fel, amelyeket Nora nem hagyhat figyelmen kívül. Hogy megtudja az igazságot apja életéről és erőszakos haláláról, Nora Vancouverből Detroitba megy, ahol az indián őslakosként örökbe fogadott férfi felnőtt. Motor Cityben azzal szembesül, hogy Sam öngyilkosságának körülményei sokkal nyugtalanítóbbak, mint hitte. Miközben Nora az apja múltjának titokzatos eseményeire összpontosít, otthon, Vancouverben a rendőrből magándetektívvé lett Jon Brazuca egy milliárdos túladagolásban elhunyt szeretőjének ügyében nyomoz. Kutatásai során egy gátlástalan droghálózatra bukkan, melynek meghökkentő módon Norához is köze van, s Nora talán csak akkor kap észbe, mekkora veszély fenyegeti, amikor már késő. Ám mégsem az apja régi kapcsolatai okozhatják a vesztét – hanem a sajátjai…

Az elbukottak

Quando era pequena, Nora Watts só conheceu o pai. Quando este se suicidou, recusou-se a sentir dor e seguiu em frente com a sua vida. Contudo, um encontro fortuito com um veterano de guerra que conhecera o pai fê-la fazer-se perguntas que não podia continuar a ignorar, para além de criar emoções sombrias que não conseguía controlar. Para se livrar do passado, terá de o enfrentar. Ao descobrir a verdade sobre a vida do pai e sobre a sua norte violenta, Nora viaja de Vancouver para Detroit, onde Sam Watts foi criado, longe do seu povo e do lugar onde nasceu. Devido a uma política governamental desastrosa que começou na década de 1950, milhares de crianças nativas canadianas, como Sam, foram adotadas por famílias americanas. Na Cidade do Motor, Nora descobre que as circunstâncias que rodearam o suicídio de Sam são inquietantes. No entanto, por muito que se afaste de Vancouver, Nora não consegue deixar os problemas para trás. De regresso ao noroeste do Pacífico, Jon Brazuca, um antigo detetive de polícia que se tornou investigador privado, está a investigar a morte por overdose da amante de um multimilionário. A sua busca expõe uma rede desumana de contrabando de opiáceos e um vínculo surpreendente com Nora, a mulher distante e irritante de quem, certa vez, tentara ser amigo... Abrasador... É inevitável fazer comparações com os trabalhos de Stieg Larsson e Lisbeth Salander. Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) "Kamal impregna a sua narração de uma melancolia palpável, capturando efetivamente a decadencia urbana de Detroit enquanto destaca a energia e a esperança das pessoas que a habitam. Com um final explosivo que abre o caminho para as futuras aventuras desta heroína cativante, complicada e imperfeita. Um thriller incrível que se conecta com as emoções." Kirkus Reviews (crítica estelar)

Tudo se desmorona

Uma história surpreendente protagonizada por Nora Watts, uma mulher brilhante, destemida, caótica e imperfeita – tão irresistível quanto Lisbeth Salander, De Stieg Larsson, E Harry Hole, De Jo Nesbø Nora Watts possui um talento único: quase sempre consegue dizer quando alguém está mentindo. Por isso é tão boa em seu trabalho como pesquisadora e investigadora particular de uma pequena firma. Ela é durona e esperta, duas qualidades que desenvolveu para sobreviver a uma infância terrível. Largada pelos pais, ela passou por todo tipo de abuso e traição ao longo vida, e carrega feridas invisíveis e um coração cheio de raiva. Quando um casal pede ajuda para encontrar sua filha desaparecida, ela decide intervir. Nora sabe os perigos que as ruas escondem. Porém, sua investigação toma um caminho terrível quando descobre que Bonnie, a adolescente sumida, é a filha que a própria Nora entregou para adoção anos atrás. Agora, ela deve entrar no mundo implacável do mercado negro e do tráfico de pessoas – um lugar no qual a riqueza e o poder estão acima da moralidade.

Aqueles que perdemos

Tutto ha inizio il giorno in cui Nora Watts riceve la telefonata che ha temuto per quindici anni, da quando ha dato in adozione la figlia appena nata: la sua bambina è scomparsa. Non che sia una sorpresa. Bonnie è un tipo irrequieto, scappa di continuo, tanto che la polizia si è stancata di cercarla. Ma questa volta c'è qualcosa di diverso e i genitori adottivi, disperati, si sono rivolti a Nora nella speranza che la ragazzina abbia cercato la madre naturale. Nora sa bene quanto siano pericolose le strade per un'adolescente sola. Lei stessa, tanto tempo prima, lo ha sperimentato sulla propria pelle nel modo più doloroso, così decide di mettersi sulle tracce di Bonnie, guidata solo dall'istinto e da un'inquietante capacità di distinguere la verità dalle bugie. È ben consapevole dei rischi che questo gesto comporta: vecchie ferite mai del tutto guarite verranno riaperte, eppure non può fermarsi. A poco a poco la ricerca mette a nudo una sconcertante cospirazione, che tra inganni e violenze la condurrà dalle tetre strade di Vancouver alle montagne innevate del Canada profondo, fino a un'isola dalla bellezza selvaggia dove sarà costretta ad affrontare i suoi demoni più oscuri... solo per salvare una figlia che vorrebbe non fosse mai nata. "La voce, la profondità psicologica e personaggi così veri da spezzare il cuore rendono La solitudine del ghiaccio un romanzo coinvolgente che rimarrà nel cuore dei lettori a lungo... forse per sempre". Jeffery Deaver "Uno straordinario romanzo d'esordio, che l'audacia della protagonista e la scrittura altrettanto audace rendono ancora più straordinario". - Lee Child

La solitudine del ghiaccio

Øjne som mine En mørk, psykologisk spændingsroman, som kryber ind under huden. Hun troede hun havde lagt sin fortid bag sig. Men hun tog fejl Det starter med den telefonsamtale, som Nora har ventet og frygtet i femten år, lige siden hun bortadopterede sin nyfødte datter. Bonnie er forsvundet. Da hun er løbet hjemmefra så mange gang før, tager politiet ikke hendes forsvinden alvorligt. De desperate adoptivforældre rækker derfor ud efter Bonnies biologiske mor, som deres allersidste håb. Som et produkt af et plejesystem og med en fortid fyldt med flugt, vold og smerte, ved Nora godt, hvad der kan ske en sårbar pige, som lever på gaden. Modvilligt begiver Nora sig af sted, med sin hund som eneste selskab, væk fra de skinnende regnvåde gader i Vancouver, velvidende at hun vil åbne sår, som aldrig er helet og dykke ned i et mørke, hvor der intet er til at beskytte hende - kun hendes instinkter og den sære evne hun har til at skille sandhed fra løgn. Eftersøgningen afslører et puslespil af en konspiration, som leder Nora på en sindsoprivende rejse af bedrag og vold. En rejse som fører hende gennem Canadas snedækkede bjerge til en smuk og farlig ø, hvor hun vil stå ansigt til ansigt med det hun frygter mest. Alt sammen for at redde en datter, hun aldrig har ønsket sig. En pageturner af en debut, som har taget Canada med storm, og den første bog i serien med den modige, kaotiske og følelsesmæssigt brændte Nora Watts som hovedperson.

Sheena Kamal

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