Please join Leanne for a chat with popular thriller author Anna Downes at our Port Macquarie Library on Saturday 15th June at 11.30am.

Anna Downes is an actor-turned-author who grew up in Sheffield, UK and now lives on the NSW Central Coast with her family. Her internationally bestselling debut novel, The Safe Place, was published simultaneously in Australia, the US and the UK in 2020, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Sisters in Crime Davitt Awards. Her second book, The Shadow House, was published in 2021 in Australia and New Zealand, followed by publication in the UK and the USA in 2022. Both have been translated into over ten different languages.

RED RIVER ROAD

International bestselling thriller writer Anna Downes anchored her previous novels The Safe Place and The Shadow House in single locations, wherein all the action was contained. Her latest captivating thriller, Red River Road, takes a different direction, as she crafts a narrative that unfolds on the move – where the very road transforms into a trail of clues.

Unfolding against the expansive backdrop of the Coral Coast in Western Australia, the story follows Katy, driving her campervan north in search for her missing sister, Phoebe. With tension and trepidation, the novel navigates the intricacies of solitary female travel, the impacts of gendered violence and the delicate balance between women’s safety   and   empowerment.   Intertwining   themes of female friendship, sisterhood, and the unconventional lifestyle of vanlife, Red River Road is a gripping psychological outback noir.

The Story

On the vast and rugged Coral Coast in Western Australia, Katy embarks on a solo journey to track down her free-spirited sister, Phoebe. Vanishing without a trace along the same route a year prior, Phoebe’s disappearance casts a long, haunting shadow over the landscape Katy travels.

But as she drives her campervan further north, Katy realises she’s not as alone as she’d first believed.

Katy’s search for the truth behind Phoebe’s disappearance takes her on a harrowing journey where the boundaries between myth and reality blur, revealing a darkness more twisted and stranger than Katy could ever have fathomed.

Red River Road is Anna’s way of reconciling the allure, risks, myths, horror stories and realities of vanlife with contemporary notions of freedom, misogyny and the psychology of trauma. After completing her own campervan trip around the Coral Coast in research for this novel, Anna brings complex characters and vivid landscapes to life. The novel will appeal to fans of outback noir with a female focus, including Dirt Town by Hayley Scrivenor and films such as The Royal Hotel directed by Kitty Green.

‘An exquisitely tense, thrilling and enjoyable puzzle of a book.’ Christian White.  ‘Dazzling, compulsive and head-spinningly twisty…’ Candice Fox

Thank you to Bookface Port Macquarie who be selling books at this event.