Meet Rad Sanders, the most terrifying serial killer you will ever encounter, in a thriller unlike any you have ever read…
Lu Jakes lives with her alcoholic father and abusive stepmother, Norlene, at Hidden Creek Lodge in the Utah mountains. When the beautiful Lisa is sent by her protective parents to stay at the lodge for the summer, Lu makes her first real friend – dangerously unaware that Lisa’s is not the only new face at the resort.
For Lisa has been followed by Rad Sanders, a sadistic killer who has plans for the girls – sick plans that will drag them and their families to the very brink of hell. Rad stalks Lu and Lisa, waiting for his moment, certain that his deadly plan cannot fail.
But unknown to Rad, Lu has a secret. She can see things that nobody else can see: the spirit Talion and his companions. But are these spirits real or a trick of the mind? And will Lu’s special gift help her and Lisa as the killer closes in…
TALION is a gripping, intense tale of friendship, family and dark desires, that blends Thomas Harris with Stephen King. It is a book that will make you want to sleep with all the lights on – if you can sleep at all.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Silence of the Lambs” meets “The Turn of the Screw” . . . . The story is propelled by suspense, and made delicious by Maddox’s Ray Bradbury-like gift for deft, deep-shadowed description.
–Charleston Times-Courier
From the Back Cover
“A gripping and relentless novel about desperate people in a desperate world…The impeccable prose of Mary Maddox makes it impossible to turn away from Rad, the brutal serial killer whose insatiable hunger threatens anyone who crosses his path, and Lu, the young teenage girl who is not what she appears to be, who possesses a power that may deliver unto Rad a reckoning beyond his imagination. This dark, but beautifully rendered novel is one you do not want to miss.”
Roxane Gay, author of Ayiti
“The author is a spellbinder…In Talion, Mary Maddox pits a sadistic killer against two achingly vulnerable potential victims with an effortless narrative control that kept me wide-eyed, as anxious over the outcome as in my early glory days as a reader.”
Sherwood Kiraly, author of Diminished Capacity and Big Babies
More About the Author
› Visit Amazon’s Mary Maddox Page
I began my life in Soldier Summit, Utah, a town of a few dozen people high in the mountains. My father owned a cafe, a gas station, and a combination grocery-bar – literally half the businesses in town. Even a minnow can be a big fish if the pond is small enough. Though I have lived in the Midwest for most of my adult life, I still miss the mountains and dream that someday I’ll live there again.I graduated from Knox College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. I taught writing at Eastern Illinois University. Now retired, I live in Charleston, Illinois with my husband, film scholar Joseph Heumann, and our bird, Westie. My short fiction has appeared in various literary journals and has been honored with Writer’s Grant and a Literary Award from the Illinois Arts Council.
Along with writing fiction, I spend my time reading, playing Scrabble at the local club, and riding my horse, Tucker.
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