Dark August, Katie Tallo
Dark August, Katie Tallo
List: $26.99 | Sale: $18.89
Club: $13.49

Dark August
A Novel

Author: Katie Tallo

Narrator: Piper Goodeve

Unabridged: 12 hr 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 06/30/2020


Synopsis

“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 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.

About Katie Tallo

Katie Tallo has been an award-winning screenwriter and director for more than three decades. After winning an international contest for unpublished fiction, she began writing novels, including Dark August and Poison Lilies. She has a daughter and lives with her husband in Ottawa, Ontario.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader on June 28, 2020

This is a juicy mystery thriller that packs a punch, and it will be out in the world next week! Augusta, who goes by Gus, is just getting by. She doesn’t have much to focus on in life, and when her great-grandmother dies, her last living relative, she makes some moves to right her life. She travels......more

Goodreads review by Jen on January 25, 2021

Ohh how I enjoyed this book!! and I was a resister too... if you aren't Canadian, you cannot know the feeling of growing up under CanCon regulations in the 1980s, which required that we didn't lose our Canadian Identity living so close to the United States. We had to listen to a percentage of Canadi......more

Goodreads review by Julie (JuJu) on October 28, 2020

Although well written, I would have enjoyed this debut more if it was faster paced and not quite so lengthy. There were plenty of twists and surprises, but I struggled to stay engaged. My Rating: 3.5 ⭐️’s (rounding down) Published: June 30th 2020 by Harper Paperbacks Pages: 448 Recommend: Yes @TalloKat......more

Goodreads review by Nursebookie on June 28, 2020

I love small town thrillers and this one certainly did it for me. It was quite the atmospheric read that I buried my nose into this weekend! Augusta ‘Gus’ Monet learns that her great grandmother—her last living relative—has just died, and returns to her hometown. She inherits an old house, and an ol......more

Goodreads review by NILTON on October 18, 2020

This is a great debut. Although the pace is slow the storyline is quite intriguing. I enjoyed the writing style and the structure and I found the main character to be quite interesting and I wouldn’t mind reading a sequel to see how she will mature. The ending felt rushed but I found it acceptable.......more