“A captivating narration by author Anna Downes adds that extra spark to her neo-gothic novel…Downes knows her characters and delivers them with professional expertise, original plotting, and a masterful performance.” — AudioFile Magazine

Superbly tense and oozing with atmosphere, Anna Downes’s debut, The Safe Place, is the perfect summer suspense, with the modern gothic feel of Ruth Ware and the morally complex family dynamics of Lisa Jewell.

Welcome to paradise…will you ever be able to leave?

Emily is a mess.

Emily Proudman just lost her acting agent, her job, and her apartment in one miserable day.

Emily is desperate.

Scott Denny, a successful and charismatic CEO, has a problem that neither his business acumen nor vast wealth can fix. Until he meets Emily.

Emily is perfect.

Scott offers Emily a summer job as a housekeeper on his remote, beautiful French estate. Enchanted by his lovely wife Nina, and his eccentric young daughter, Aurelia, Emily falls headlong into this oasis of wine-soaked days by the pool. But soon Emily realizes that Scott and Nina are hiding dangerous secrets, and if she doesn’t play along, the consequences could be deadly.

A Macmillan Audio from Minotaur Books

“Richly evocative with a dark, atmospheric heart, The Safe Place is seductive, irresistible and suspenseful. I was completely gripped from the first page to the pulse-pounding end…It’s the perfect summer suspense.” –Christina McDonald, USA Today bestselling author

“The Safe Place is a dark and wonderful debut that lulls you in with beautiful prose and complex, believable characters, then beats you over the head with a killer plot and a thrilling climax. It’s the kind of book you race through as quickly as you can so you can start it again.”–Christian White, internationally bestselling author of The Nowhere Child and The Wife and the Widow

“The tension ratchets up and up in this beautifully paced thriller–an outstanding debut, populated by complex and sympathetic characters. You’ll be thinking about them long after you’ve finished reading. Destined to be a book club favorite.”–Chris Hammer, international bestselling author of Scrublands

Extraordinarily tense and deliciously mysterious, Anna Downes’s The Shadow House follows one woman’s desperate journey to protect her children at any cost, in a remote place where not everything is as it seems.

A HOUSE WITH DEADLY SECRETS.

A MOTHER WHO’LL RISK EVERYTHING TO BRING THEM TO LIGHT.

Alex, a single mother-of-two, is determined to make a fresh start for her and her children. In an effort to escape her troubled past, she seeks refuge in a rural community. Pine Ridge is idyllic; the surrounding forests are beautiful and the locals welcoming. Mostly.

But Alex finds that she may have disturbed barely hidden secrets in her new home. As a chain of bizarre events is set off, events eerily familiar to those who have lived there for years, Alex realizes that she and her family might be in greater danger than ever before. And that the only way to protect them all is to confront the shadows lurking in Pine Ridge.

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books.