The Girls Left Behind

<p><strong>Winner of the 2021 Australian Shadows Award for Best Novel</strong></p><p><strong>The dead will rise and your heart will race - The Girls Left Behind is a gut-wrenching hell ride through post-apocalyptic rural Australia</strong> - Emma Nayfie</p><p><strong>Vivid visceral and bloody terrifying in the best way possible</strong> - JM Merryt</p><p>Three-year-old Zoey doesn't understand why Mummy won't wake up.</p><p>She doesn't know why Daddy never came home. Why the house is so quiet. Or why she can hear whispers of laughter outside in the dark and lifeless streets.</p><p>But as the dead begin to rise she won't be alone for long.</p><p>Hundreds of kilometres away sisters Merry and Claire think they've been saved.</p><p>After a brutal encounter with a grinning bloodied thing that used to be human they're taken in by Mr Blake-a man who promises safety behind barred windows and strict rules. But as Merry settles into her new reality she begins to question what she's traded for protection...and how much more she's willing to lose.</p><p>In an plague-ravaged Australia hollowed out by death the ones left behind may find that survival demands something darker than hope.</p><p></p><p>TRIGGER WARNING: This book contains scenes of self-harm.</p>