Hester Velmans – författare

An award-winning, internationally bestselling author makes her American debut with this taut, riveting domestic drama with the compulsive intensity of The Good Girl, The Pocket Wife, and The Stranger, about a long-lost brother convicted of a horrifying crime and a sister's fight to clear his name. A single mother and lawyer, Iris has a colorful caseload, a young son with behavior issues, and a judgmental mother. She also has a brother-shocking news she uncovers by accident. Why did her mother lie to her for her entire life? Why did she hide the existence of Ray Boelens from her? Curious about this sibling she has never known, Iris begins to search for long-buried truths. What she discovers surprises-and horrifies-her. Her older brother is autistic-and in prison for brutally murdering his neighbor and her daughter. Visiting Ray, she meets a man who looks heartbreakingly like her own son. A man who is devoted to his tropical fish and who loves baking bread. A man whose naivete unnerves her. There is no question that Ray is odd and obsessive, unable to communicate like the rest of us. But is he really a killer?Told in the alternative voices of Ray and Iris, Girl in the Dark is a compulsive, page-turning thriller about lies, murder, and the tenacity of a family determined to stay together even as they are pulled apart at the most vulnerable seams.

Eleven-year-old Isabel is a “plain old” girl living in Provincetown, Massachusetts, who believes that she is destined to accomplish something special. When her fifth-grade class goes on a whale-watch field trip, something amazing happens: Dozens of different species of whales surround the boat, bumping the deck and sending Isabel flying into the ocean. Isabel is shocked to hear the whales speaking to her—she is a mermaid, they tell her, a “Chosen One” who has the ability to turn from a human into a whale and back again. She is destined to live among the whales long enough to learn their ways, and teach them about the human world. Living among her pod is fun, at first, but Isabel has an important mission. She will change the whales’ future forever, and learn a lot about herself in the process.From the Hardcover edition.