Under the Lake

Book excerpt: From bestselling author Stuart Woods, a thriller featuring John Howell, a former investigative journalist trying to escape from his past who finds a perfect sanctuary in a lakeside home in the North Georgia Mountains. But little does he realize the small town harbors a dark and evil secret, hidden deep within the lake’s waters. In the beautiful mountains of North Georgia lies a lake built by an obsessed man at a terrible price. This placid body of water has brought prosperity to an isolated community, and with it, two strangers who intermingle with the insular local folk, strangers probing into crimes against nature from generations past that cannot remain submerged beneath the waters' surface. Under the Lake marks the eagerly awaited return to the South of his Edgar Award–winning novel Chiefs. John Howell, once a top investigative journalist, comes to this backcountry town on the run from a once promising personal and professional life that has somehow gone sour. What he finds is a mystery so deep, so complex, so bizarre, that he cannot concentrate on the book he has come here to write. The story begins with his entanglement in a subtle, but relentless battle waged by the autocratic town father and the local sheriff against an outcast family, ravaged by its origins. Howell is further drawn in by his involvement with two women—an ambitious young reporter on the prowl for corruption, and a shy backwoods beauty, forsaken by the world because of her family's ill kept secret. Then, without warning, visits from an otherworldly young girl haunt Howell as his rustic cabin becomes a spectral theater offering strange and frightening images of a hideous event of long ago.