An exclusive thriller writer’s retreat hosted on a private island turns lethal when one of the authors is found murdered.
When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance—particularly since she has an axe to grind with one of the invitees. The guest list? Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection, and mayhem.
Confess the crimes, survive the tropes.
Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two—the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead—and it’s not the murder she planned—Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether.
One by one, you’ll lose your turn.
With a storm isolating the island, and the body count rising, Mila must outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book.
Until only one of us remains…
Don't just take our word for it...
“Readers who love puzzles, locked-room mysteries, and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None will enjoy this inaugural effort by Pliego, with its chilling conclusion.”
– Library Journal
“This meta, ironic, fun thriller will keep you turning pages late into the night. You won’t know who did it or how or why until the very juicy end!”
– Sascha Rothchild, Emmy award–winning author of Blood Sugar
“Deliciously twisted… perfect for thriller fans hungry for a fresh spin on a locked-room murder mystery.”
– Erin A. Craig, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Thirteenth Child
Taste the very first page
An Excerpt from The Ink in Your Veins: On Writing Fear
BY J. R. ALASTOR
If you were to take Story, strap it down onto your dining room table, and slide a scalpel through its chest, you would find the lifeblood is theme. It causes Story’s cold corpse to breathe, to reach through the sheets of dead trees and puncture your skin, fastening long, clawed fingers around your heart.
Let me ask you this: Why do we love the thrill? How on earth have my grisly books sold so many copies worldwide? (Abounding gratitude, by the way.) And why is The Haunting of Hill House still regarded as one of the greatest stories of all time?
My theory is that the monster in the house, the killer in the dark, reflects ourselves. That in reading about a house morphing into a twisted mirror of a young woman’s soul, we feel as though we, too, have looked ourselves in the eye. Like the Greeks, who witnessed plays of great tragedy and comedy to experience the emotion, we, too, hunger for confrontation of our innermost secrets.
We’ve all done things in the dark, after all.
Only, also like the Greeks, we want this experience in a safe environment. We don’t want to face ourselves, not really. We just want to feel like we have—to sample the sting of guilt, the relief of catharsis, and to move along as if nothing happened.
Writing is a kind of beautiful madness. It is slitting your- self open, bleeding your soul onto the page in that paradoxical…
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