SERENDIPITOUS TUESDAYS: INTROS/TEASERS – “PLAYING DEAD”

 

 

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Today’s spotlight shines on a book from my stacks, purchased a few months ago.  Playing Dead, by Julia Heaberlin, is a compelling family mystery.

 

 

Intro:  Despite its name, Ponder, Texas, pop. 1,101, isn’t a very good place to think.  Four months out of the year, it’s too damn hot to think.

It is a good place to get lost.  That’s what my mother did thirty-two years ago.  The fact that she successfully hid this from almost everyone who loved her makes her a pretty good liar.  I’m not sure what it says about me.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother would tell my fortune to keep me still.  I vividly remember one August day when the red line on the back porch thermometer crept up to 108.  Sweat dribbled down the backs of my knees, a thin cotton sundress pressed wet against my back.  My legs swung back and forth under the kitchen table, too short to reach the floor.  Granny snapped beans in a soothing rhythm.  I stared at a tall glass pitcher of iced tea that floated with mint leaves and quarter moons of lemon, wishing I could jump in.  Granny promised a storm coming from Oklahoma would cool things off by dinner.  The fan kept blowing the cards off the table and I kept slapping them down, giggling.

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Teaser:  I strode over, furious, thinking that anger was a good emotion for me to hang on to.  It cleared my head of all the crazy crap  (p. 123).

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Amazon Description:  “Dear Tommie: Have you ever wondered about who you are?”
 
The letter that turns Tommie McCloud’s world upside down arrives from a stranger only days after her father’s death. The woman who wrote it claims that Tommie is her daughter—and that she was kidnapped as a baby thirty-one years ago.

Tommie wants to believe it’s all a hoax, but suddenly a girl who grew up on a Texas ranch finds herself  linked to a horrific past: the slaughter of a family in Chicago, the murder of an Oklahoma beauty queen, and the kidnapping of a little girl named Adriana. Tommie races along a twisting, nightmarish path while an unseen stalker is determined to keep old secrets locked inside the dementia-battered brain of the woman who Tommie always thought was her real mother. With everything she has ever believed in question, and no one she can trust, Tommie must discover the truth about the girl who vanished—and the very real threats that still remain.

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What do you think?  Something that you would keep reading?  I’ve never read this author, but I am eager to discover what’s inside the spine.