Join us for a conversation with Paula McLain, author of “When the Stars Go Dark.”

A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal?

Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When overwhelming tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna’s childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment. The most difficult lessons of her life have given her insight into how victims come into contact with violent predators. As Anna becomes obsessed with the missing girl, she must accept that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in.

Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives–and our faith in one another.

 Order your copy from Mac’s Backs — Books on Coventry: https://www.macsbacks.com/book/9780593237892

“Much of what the poet has presented to us is painful, yes, but it is also beautiful in how it uses voice as a symbol for continued imagination. Altogether, The Voice of Sheila Chandra is both an excavation and compilation of our survival.” – NPR

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Nicole Burdge is a medical scientist and fiction writer whose story, “Lost in Transformation,” was featured in The Masters Review’s New Voices series. She is a graduate of the Northeast Ohio MFA program, a lifelong reader and writer who has a hard drive full of unpublished projects. She lives with her husband and dog in Akron, where she is writing a novel that she is confident will finally land her a book deal.

Michael Credico is the author of Heartland Calamitous (Autumn House Press) which was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection and The 2021 Story Prize. His fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Hobart, New Ohio Review, NOÖ Journal, Puerto del Sol, Quarterly West, and others. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio. His website is www.michaelcredico.com.