
“YOU BELIEVERS examines the anatomy of a horrific crime from every angle: the victim, the perpetrator, the family members left behind, and the tenacious searcher whose job it is to bring closure. Several perfectly pitched Southern narratives weave together to form a strong song of love, loss, and human resilience. A gripping, intense read.” - Jodi Picoult, author of SING YOU HOME and HOUSE RULES
* Booklist Starred Review *
“In a riveting narrative, Bradley offers both unending compassion and a chilling assessment of the kind of harm that people are able and willing to inflict on one another. In heartrending detail, she lays out the ruined lives and broken hearts inevitably left in the wake of those ubiquitous missing posters tacked up in store windows. Harrowing reading from a gifted writer.” - Booklist
“masterly . . . A compelling crime story . . . A broad audience will like this, including readers of Jodi Picoult and James Patterson.”—Library Journal
“Heartbreaking . . . Told bluntly from a cast of honest characters, Bradley’s novel is haunting.” - Publishers Weekly
“Her writing is like a mix of Tommy Franklin and a William Gay. ...You Believers is relentless. ...it’s worth every minute you invest in reading it. This woman writes with grit”.- Karen Spears Zacharias
“You Believers is a superb novel.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Shelby Waters is a searcher, the last person a family turns to when a loved one has gone missing and all avenues of inquiry have failed. Shelby’s quest takes the reader through a world of random violence and evil, a realm that is all too real in today’s society. This is a novel of high intensity, yet also one of great compassion and empathy as people try to come to terms with the worst that is possible in life.—Bill Cusumano, Nicola’s Books
“You Believers is a splendid crime novel. Jane Bradley has an exceptional feel for time and place and language, a real gift for suspenseful plotting, and most importantly a talent for writing real human beings.” - -Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest and Cottonwood
You Believers by Jane Bradley. Jesse is a sociopath hell-bent on making random women pay for the perceived sins of his mother and this is the story of those unfortunate souls who cross his path—the girls who go missing, the people who search for them, and the one young woman who survives. This is a literary page turner of the highest order, where the darkest corners of our everyday world are limned in sinister shadow and even the bright daylight spaces are dappled with menace. - Emily Crowe, Odyssey Bookshop
“Multiple voices are employed to stunning effect in this novel of those who are lost and those who find. Bradley’s powerful writing catapults the story of a missing young woman into an engrossing character study that examines in meaningful and sometimes unexpectedly moving ways the actions of all the players in the story: those who love and miss her; those who search for her with their own versions of hope; and those who are responsible for her being lost. The voice of Shelby Waters, the finder, is particularly strong, and resonates with equal parts compassion, hope, and world-weariness. Thank you, Ms. Bradley, for being bold enough to allow your characters to have all their gray areas. When a writer trusts her readers enough to do that it’s an honor to spend time lost in their words.” - Eleanor Lucas, Capitol Books & News
When a young woman vanishes without a trace, eventually she becomes another unsolved case. Not for Shelby Waters, the relentless narrator of this intense suspense debut. Shelby never stops searching. Sometimes the trail ends in heartbreak, but any answer is better than the gnawing uncertainty that they should have looked harder, a little bit longer, more closely. YOU BELIEVERS explores the dark side of how things can go wrong very quickly, and how even the simplest of lives can be turned inside out when evil knocks at the door.- Geoffrey Jennings, Rainy Day Books
You Believers is a damn good read. It has all the elements that keep the reader glued to the seat, ignoring pressing obligations—well-drawn, intriguing characters, sweaty palms-suspenseful scenes, dark humor, and poignant sorrow. This story lingers with the reader long after the book is closed, and returns again and again with every “Missing” headline.
— Laura DeVault, Over the Moon Bookstore & Artisan Gallery, Crozet, VA
Bradley takes a new approach to the story of a missing person by voicing (in a distinct and lovely way) each person affected by the event—the victim, the perpetrator, the victim’s fiancee, the victim’s mother and best of all, Shelby Waters, a searcher for lost persons. When the police believe that Katy Conley has run away rather than been taken, the family contacts Shelby who has spent the biggest part of her life looking for the missing. Sometimes she finds them and other times they stare at her out of the pictures hung on the walls of her home/office. The book takes a difficult subject and makes it riveting and satisfying. We all end up believing in something and sometimes something must be lost before something else can be found. - Vicki Erwin, Main Street Books
“Beautifully written and profoundly felt, this eloquent novel lingers in the mind long after the last page is turned.” - William Gay
“Her writing is like a mix of Tommy Franklin and William Gay. You Believers is relentless. ...It’s worth every minute you invest in reading it. This woman writes with grit.” - Karen Spears Zacharias