Title:Shutter Creek
Author:Ann Swann
Genre:Fiction,
Romantic, Suspense
Publisher:5
Prince Books
Formats Available In:All
eBook formats
Release Date: June
1, 2013
Digital: ISBN 13:978-1-939217-50-9 ISBN 10:1-939217-50-4
Print: ISBN 13:978-1-939217-49-3
ISBN 10:1-939217-49-0
Purchase Link: http://www.5princebooks.com/buy.html(Available June 1)
Blurb:She went
looking for an old flame and found a serial killer instead.
When Beth lost her father to cancer and her husband to
another woman, she didn’t know where to turn.
So she retreated to the family cabin at Stutter Creek. Some of the best times of her life were spent
at that cabin. That’s where she met her
first crush, a boy named John. But that
was many years ago . . . could he possibly still be around? Or would she find something sinister instead?
Ann Swann is the author of All For Love, a contemporary love
story published by 5 Prince Publishing.
She is the author of Stevie-girl and the Phantom Pilot, and Stevie-girl
and the Phantom Student, tales of the supernatural. She has also written numerous award winning
short stories. She lives in West Texas
with her husband and their rescue pets.
She loves libraries and book stores and owns two different e-readers
just for fun. Her to-be-read list has
taken on a life of its own. She calls it
Herman.
Excerpt:
Amanda Myers was making a conscious effort to keep her heavy
foot off the Toyota’s gas pedal when she spied what appeared to be a small boy
standing beside the road. An old fashioned newsboy cap nearly obscured his tiny
face.
Mandy hit the brake and steered the Celica toward the gravel
shoulder. With a practiced hand, she quickly texted her coworker, Myra, and
asked her to concoct a cover story for her tardiness.
The kid had seemed very small in silhouette—maybe five or
six years old—and no house or vehicle in sight.
When Myra texted back to say the boss was on the warpath,
Mandy replied, “Well, just tell him I stopped to pick up a boy on the edge of
town. That should really turn his face red!” It was an inside joke. Everyone
knew when the boss’s face was red it was wise to give him a wide berth.
Myra sent back a row of question marks.
“L8R,” Mandy responded. She looked all around. She had
assumed the little guy would come dashing up to the car as soon as she had come
to a stop. But even when she could no longer hear the crunch of her tires on
gravel, he still hadn’t materialized.
I didn’t pass him by
that much.
Craning her neck to see past the Toyota’s blind spot, Mandy
dropped the phone into the center console drink holder and shoved the gearshift
into park. A thick stand of live oaks cast a deep shadow over the bar ditch.
The setting sun made the trees appear as black-paper cutouts in a landscape
collage.
After checking her mirrors to make sure no one was behind
her, Mandy pressed the button to lower the passenger-side window.
It was almost all the way down when a man yanked open the
door and exploded into her world like a tornado into a trailer park. Her hand flew to the gearshift, but she
couldn’t engage it. Even as her flight
instinct kicked in, part of her mind was telling her this was almost certainly
the same strange guy who had requested her section at the restaurant the night
before. His eyes had seemed to follow
her all around the crowded dining room, and his oily stench had made him stand
out like a spot of mold on white linen.
Mandy drew in breath to scream, her hand scrambling across
the console for her phone or the gearshift, whichever came first, but he was
too fast. With lightning speed, he dove
across the seat and slapped a rectangle of duct tape across her mouth. At the same time, he buried his free hand
knuckle deep in the thick blonde braid at the base of her skull even as his
other hand slid down to her windpipe and began to squeeze.
Mandy’s fight instinct kicked in then, and she whipped her
head back and forth in an effort to dislodge his hands. His stench, and the
oily filth of his unkempt hair, was sickening. She clawed at his eyes, ripped
at his skin, but it was no use. The
psycho laughed and simply leaned his head back out of her reach.
That’s when Mandy began to claw at her own face, attempting
to scratch the silver tape off her mouth. It didn’t matter. There was no one
around to hear her scream even if she could have gotten it off.
She wasn’t a quitter, though. Mandy did her best to get her feet out from
under the steering column to kick. But he was pressing down on her with his
whole weight. She was trapped. Calmly, the psycho took one hand off her throat,
doubled up his fist, and hit her so hard the back of her skull struck the driver’s
side window with an audible whap!
Then he went back to her throat. As his deceptively thin
fingers crushed her windpipe, Mandy’s grip on reality began to loosen. Tiny strobes flashed inside her skull.
He squeezed even harder, the tips of his fingers
disappearing into the flesh of her throat.
At the last second, as her world began to grow dark, a
memory flashed through Mandy’s mind. She remembered how as a small girl of six,
she had begun to worry about running out of air because if you couldn’t see something,
how did you know how much of it was left? She could see balloons, though. So she had begged her mom to buy
several packages of the colorful party staples, which she’d then blown up and
stored in her bedroom closet. Her mom humored her. Her older sister, Kami,
however, couldn’t let a good thing like that go unnoticed.
She had waited until Mandy was out, then she’d tied all the
balloons together and attached them to the stop sign on the corner. Mandy had
felt so humiliated when she came home from school and saw them. She’d wanted to
get them down and put them back in her closet, but she couldn’t bring herself
to do it. She would have let herself run out of air before giving her sister
that satisfaction.
The balloon bouquet had wilted quickly in the hot New Mexico
sun.
Now, even as she was dying, Mandy grasped the irony of that
memory. She really had run out of air. Her last coherent thought—as the
fireworks behind her eyelids exploded in the grand finale—was of those wilting,
multicolored balloons.
About Ann Swann:
Ann lives in West Texas with her handsome hubby and three
rescue pets. All For Love is Ann’s first romance novel. She is the
author of the Young Adult books: The Phantom Series. Book One is The
Phantom Pilot, Book Two is The Phantom Student, and she is hard at work on Book
Three, The Phantom of Crybaby Bridge. Ann has also published short
fiction in the anthologies Timeless (paranormal love stories) and Campfire
Tales (spooky stories for the young at heart).
How to Contact Ann Swann:
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