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“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

“You Believers by Jane Bradley is the latest in a long series of winners from this publisher and was one of the most moving novels I’ve read in quite a long time…If you can handle the raw emotion that emanates from every page of this book, you will not be disappointed. You Believers is the best book I’ve read this year.” — The Lit Witch

“This is a powerful story of loss and grief. . . .” — Writing about Reading

“I was still thinking about this one after I read it, and that is the mark of a great read.” 5 out of 5 stars — Knitting and Sundries

“This book got me to give thanks for each day that I am safe, and to make sure that I take every precaution that I can – when I’m out and even when I am home.” — Peddler of Dreams

“I found myself unable to put this book down.” — Bookworm Baby

JANE BRADLEY

YOU BELIEVERS

You Believers is a powerful, cathartic story of casual evil and of how the worst things can be faced so that we might not only survive, but grow. A young woman goes missing, and her mother uproots her life to find her daughter. But it is not just the heartbreak or the deep mystery of the hunt for lost loved ones that Bradley so convincingly explores. Rather, with the help of an amazingly dedicated searcher, family and friends somehow learn to move past unspeakable horror and celebrate the tenacity of the human spirit. Offering a vision that is at once ruthless and utterly compassionate, Bradley renders the search for logic, meaning, redemption and even hope in the domino force that is human nature.

Part Southern gothic, part crime, part haunting suspense story, You Believers takes us on an infinitely harrowing journey that rewards the reader with insight into how we might endure horrible events with faith, strength, and grace even while it reveals the ripple effects of random violence.

$25.95 / $26.96 CAN | FICTION Hardcover | 6x9 | 432 pages

May 3, 2011

ISBN: 978-1-60953-046-4 | Carton Quantity: 20

EISBN: 978-1-60953-047-1

It’s classic, almost. Like the story of Persephone picking flowers in a field one spring afternoon. The earth opens. Hades comes roaring up in his chariot, black horses digging up dirt with their hooves, hot breath swirling from flared nostrils. With a quick swoop of thick, muscled arm, Hades snatches the girl, drags her down to the underworld. You know the story. A mother comes to the rescue, finds her daughter has eaten six seeds of the dark fruit, pomegranate seeds that crunched between the girl’s teeth, red juice running from her lips.

And the mother’s world, the whole wide world, is changed.

My name’s Shelby Waters, and you don’t know me, and you might not ever want to know me because I’m a searcher. I’m the one you call when someone you love goes missing. Yes, of course you call the cops first, and you should. But once the cop is gone with his report and the profile of what went down rising up in his mind, and you’ve got nothing left but worry and waiting for the phone to ring, you call me. And I listen to your sorrows and fears and speculations. And you, like everyone who’s missing someone, hope for the best and fear the worst. That’s a hard line to walk. So I step in and I look at your pictures, letters, whatever fragments you might have that belong or relate to the one you’ve lost. I try to fill in the gaps between what you think might have happened, what you fear might have happened, and what did go down and how it went. And while I’m figuring the story, I’m doing my best to make you feel you can stand and walk, and no matter what happens, you can go on and live.

Jane Bradley is the author of two acclaimed story collections and a novella, Power Lines, which was named a New York Times Notable Book. Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, she now teaches at the University of Toledo in Ohio. This is her first full-length novel.

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