Hi and welcome to FromBelgiumWithBookLove where it is my absolute honour to share with you an excerpt from The Creak on the Stairs! My review is here if you want to check that out. Many thanks to Anne Cater for having me on the tour!
Let’s have a quick look at the blurb first:
When a body of a woman is discovered at a lighthouse in the Icelandic town of Akranes, it soon becomes clear that she’s no stranger to the area.
Chief Investigating Officer Elma, who has returned to Akranes following a failed relationship, and her collegues Sævar and Hörður, commence an uneasy investigation, which uncovers a shocking secret in the dead woman’s past that continues to reverberate in the present day …
But as Elma and her team make a series of discoveries, they bring to light a host of long-hidden crimes that shake the entire community. Sifting through the rubble of the townspeople’s shattered memories, they have to dodge increasingly serious threats, and find justice … before it’s too late.
Ready? Okay, let’s get ourselves to Iceland!
Ása had known from the first instant that she had found her husband, the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with – Him with a capital H. He was tall and dark, and the other girls had gazed at him enviously. This was hardly surprising as she had never been considered much to look at herself, with her ginger hair and her complexion that burst out in freckles at the first hint of summer.
Thinking about it later, she was convinced it was her vulnerability that had attracted him. He had seen that she was a girl who wouldn’t stand up for herself. Instead, she smiled shyly and folded her arms meekly across her stomach; she always laid the table and never walked ahead of him when they were out; she ironed his shirts without having to be asked or ever being thanked. When she and Hendrik had first got to know each other, he had said that her timidity was one of the things that had captivated him. He couldn’t stand strident women, referring to them as ‘pushy cows’, but she was a girl after his own heart, who knew when to keep quiet and let others do the talking. Who was nice and submissive. Who would make a good mother.
She wiped away the tears as they spilled over. What on earth was the matter with her? Why was she suddenly so easily upset?
After all, she had coped with so much over the years. And she had Bjarni. He hadn’t been a bad son to her – quite the opposite.
Although he took after his father in appearance, his expression was gentler, lacking all hardness. Despite being nearly forty, he had held on to his boyish looks. When he smiled, her world seemed brighter, but when Ása saw him with the boys he coached at football, something seemed to break inside her.
She knew he wanted children. Not that he’d mentioned it, of course, but she knew. She was his mother, after all, and knew him better than anyone else. The only thing standing in the way was her. She was too self-centred to have children. And because of her, the family line would die out with Bjarni. Ása didn’t know if she could bear it, but what choice did she have?
She drew the curtains, changed into her nightie and got into bed, pulling the duvet over herself, though it wasn’t yet evening. It wasn’t Bjarni’s childlessness that had caused her to react so violently just now, but the visit she had received that morning.
What had happened then had distressed her so much that she needed to lie down. She was too old to start reopening old wounds. She’d been through enough suffering. Now all she wanted was to go to sleep. To sleep and never to wake up again.
Are you intrigued? The Creak on the Stairs is out now! Order from Amazon here. Note that it’s also Goldsboro’s Book of the Month, order your limited edition hardcover here, it’s signed, numbered, and has sprayed edges 😍
The excerpt alone already makes me want to reread it… Or at least extra-impatient for the sequel. 😉 Thanks for sharing! xx
Thanks for the blog tour support Kelly x
My pleasure!