INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Dark August is a tightly-paced cauldron of a thriller about small town corruption, murder and mayhem, in the vein of Sharp Objects and All The Missing Girls. A macabre and confidently twisty debut.” — Lisa Gabriele, internationally bestselling author of The Winters
An electrifying, page-turning debut about a young woman haunted by her tragic past, who returns to her … Winters
An electrifying, page-turning debut about a young woman haunted by her tragic past, who returns to her hometown and discovers that there might be more to her police detective mother’s death—and last case—than she ever could have imagined.
Augusta (Gus) Monet is living an aimless existence with her grifter boyfriend when she learns that her great grandmother—her last living relative—has just died. Ditching her boyfriend, Gus returns to the home she left as a young girl. Her inheritance turns out to be a dilapidated house and an old dog named Levi. While combing through her great grandmother’s possessions, Gus stumbles across an old trunk filled with long-lost childhood belongings. But that’s not all the trunk contains. She also discovers cold case files that belonged to her mother, a disgraced police detective who died in a car accident when Gus was eight. Gus remembers her mother obsessing over these very same documents and photographs, especially a Polaroid of a young ballerina.
When Gus spots a front-page news story about the unearthing of a body linked to one of the cold case files from her childhood trunk, she can’t resist following her mother’s clues. As she digs deeper, determined to finish her mother’s investigation, her search leads her to a deserted ghost town, which was left abandoned when the residents fled after a horrific fire. As Gus’ obsession with the case grows, she inadvertently stirs up the evils of the past, putting her life in danger. But Gus is undeterred and is committed to uncovering long-buried secrets, including the secrets surrounding a missing geology student, the young ballerina in the Polaroid, a prominent family’s devastating legacy, and a toxic blast that blew an entire town off the map.
But is Gus ready to learn the truths that culminated on one terrible August night, more than a decade earlier, when lives were taken, and secrets were presumed buried forever…?
Dark August introduces a bold new voice and will leave readers guessing until the final startling conclusion.
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What elevates Tallo’s galloping story is the freshness of the writing, and the deep explorations of character. An imaginative thriller — as much about family, loss, greed, and a young woman’s attempt to find a place in the world, as it is about solving a long-buried mystery.
Some times would have to go back a few pages from the day before to figure out where/who characters are. Once you get past that it is a pretty good read.
A great debut!
Katie Tallo’s characters are well defined and you feel like you are sitting right there with them and going on the journey that Augusta (Gus) is following to find out what really happened to her mother when she was killed years ago.
Gus has to decide who to trust, they all looked suspicious to me and who to run away from
I enjoyed the venue of Ottawa and surrounding district being Canadian.
The pages turn quickly
Dark August is a tightly-paced cauldron of a thriller about small town corruption, murder and mayhem, in the vein of Sharp Objects and All The Missing Girls. A macabre and confidently twisty debut.
Excellent dark Canadian thriller
“Her dad loved the underdog. Loved the idea that anybody could do something great. Just once. And that would be enough. That would make his life matter forever.”
August “Gus” Monet is 20 years old and has been on her own for a long time. Both of her parents were policemen with the RCMP in Ottawa, Canada and both died young. She went to live with her great-grandmother at 8 years old and was shuttled off to a boarding school very soon thereafter until she was 18.
She is now back in her hometown in Ottawa after receiving word that her great-grandmother has passed away. Little does she know the murky waters of secrets that she will uncover as she looks back into her mother’s last days.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story. I loved the character of Gus, trusting soul she was even after the hard knocks life has thrown at her. And I loved her old dog, Levi.
Most of the story is based on the small town of Elgin – a town devastated by greed and by unsafe, deadly mining practices. I enjoyed reading about it and the way it was utterly destroyed.
This is a murder mystery and also a thriller and I highly recommend it.
I received a copy of this book from Harper Books through Net Galley and Edelweiss in the hopes that I would read it and leave an unbiased review.
Amazing debut novel! It started a little slow (honestly, I started and stopped several times before I finally just sat down and read all the way through), but then …. non-stop reading. Enjoyed the mystery and the twists & turns. I did figure out a couple of the twists but it didn’t detract my enjoyment of the story. Great story, great characters, great plot. I can’t wait to see what this new author comes up with next!
Thank you #netgalley and #HarperCollins Publishers for the eARC.