The Book of Briars

Book excerpt: No one remembered the books but her. Alistair Mead only remembers one thing from the year she went missing as a child: A series of books that don’t exist. After years of searching, she stumbles on a clue that proves the books were real but were somehow erased from existence. Desperate for answers, Alistair is drawn into an ancient literary underworld whose members believe she might be the key to unraveling the books, and the altered history of the world. Ben Kriminger hasn’t written in a year. Traumatized by the fanatical reaction to his novel about unsolved disappearances, Ben is still trying to undo the bloody damage caused by his writing and the unhinged reader who couldn’t tell fiction from fact. When book pages about a young woman named Alistair begin showing up on Ben’s doorstep, he finds that her story mirrors events in his own ill-fated novel. Still unsure if what he’s reading is fiction, Ben can’t help but act when the pages depict the same people who destroyed his life turning their twisted attention on Alistair. As their parallel paths spiral toward an impossible revelation, Ben and Alistair learn that seeing this story through may damn the world to darkness before the final page is turned. The Book of Briars is a reality-smashing tale of fiction and fate, a story that explores what happens when the lines that separate memory, magic, and the mundane world are shattered beyond repair.