Abernathy

<p>A small town is just a jail with no bars. Trapped always watched always watching and the question is: are you the jailer or the inmate? <br />In Abernathy Claire Patel-Campbell's debut novel you're dropped into Small Town America: which could be small-town England; small-town anywhere. You feel the frost in your bones your breath freezes and you shiver with dread. You become one with the residents: walk the same streets drink the same bad coffee and feel as claustrophobic or as powerful as one can in a tiny town with secrets. <br />It all starts with a body frozen in the snow. Who she is and why she came to be there will be the plucked thread that may cause the whole town to unravel.  </p><p><br />"I fell into the story and the characters: there is a swiftly developing complexity and a feel of disaster that is compelling. There is that sense of anarchy about it which I think is one of the markers of Americanness. Always odd that a country so dominated by legalities should feel so lawless."<br />Alan Smith author of Her Majesty's Philosophers</p>