Title: Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward
Publisher: Park Row
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 368 pages
Summary:
A devoted wife, a loving husband and a chilling murder that no one saw coming.
Things that make me scared: When Charlie cries. Hospitals and lakes. When Ian drinks vodka in the basement. ISIS. When Ian gets angry… That something is really, really wrong with me.
Maddie and Ian’s love story began with a chance encounter at a party overseas; he was serving in the British army and she was a travel writer visiting her best friend, Jo. Now almost two decades later, married with a beautiful son, Charlie, they are living the perfect suburban life in Middle America. But when a camping accident leaves Maddie badly scarred, she begins attending writing therapy, where she gradually reveals her fears about Ian’s PTSD; her concerns for the safety of their young son; and the couple’s tangled and tumultuous past with Jo.
From the Balkans to England, Iraq to Manhattan, and finally to an ordinary family home in Kansas, sixteen years of love and fear, adventure and suspicion culminate in The Day of the Killing, when a frantic 911 call summons the police to the scene of a shocking crime.
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Excerpt #10
For the first stretch of the drive, Joanna was busy texting her coworkers about the situation. When the border crossing was behind us, my thoughts wandered. My parents would be furious with me for taking the Fodor’s job and staying in Eastern Europe. However, I imagined my grandmother Audrey would be quite pleased. She, too, had been frustrated by the inertia of her Midwestern upbringing in a small university town filled with academics and immigrants. But she had learned French in school and German from her grandparents.
When I was thirteen she took me on an architectural tour of France focusing on the structures of Le Corbusier. On Saturdays she would take me to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and make me repeat after her: “Though Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins museum is primarily distinguished for its extensive collection of Asian art, I have always particularly adored the lovely east wing, which is filled with European paintings by Caravaggio, El Greco, Degas and Monet.”
This was one of many rehearsed opinions meant to be shared with the sophisticated and cultured people she introduced me to on our travels. I remember sitting across from her over a light lunch after one such outing to the Nelson-Atkins. We were at her first-choice corner table at the private Carriage Club. I was sipping tea, ignoring the enticing bread basket and picking at my salad as she had taught me to do.
“The problem with Sara,” she said, referring to my sexy sister, “is that she has never had her heart broken. And Julia. Well. Julia is brilliant. But book brilliant, if you know what I mean. You, my dear,” she said, her small gray eyes boring into mine with fiery ambition, “you are more like me. The type to take on the world. People like us? We don’t play by the rules. My grandparents would say you are ‘übermensch.’ Remarkable.”
I took my grandmother’s veiny hand in both of mine and leaned toward her to share in her conspiratorial smile. Maybe I was remarkable. She said so and I was game to find out. And unremarkable Kansas played no part in my future whatsoever. My parents had no idea, but I was never going to move back home.
It was partly because of that conversation with Grandmother Audrey that I began to view the rules as guidelines, scoff at danger and flirt with disaster. Like Icarus, I suppose I was giddy and flew too close to the sun.
His wings were fake, constructed of wax and feathers. He should have known better. They melted and burned. He plummeted from high in the sky into a vast sea where he drowned.
Up front in the driver’s seat, Stoyan cracked his window and began to smoke. Only one hand on the wheel. We’d reached a neglected stretch of highway, the road uneven and dark. Trucks coming from the opposite direction barreled by, causing gusts of wind.
Stoyan began to overtake a slow-moving car while headlights from oncoming traffic twinkled ominously in the distance. The radio was loud.
I glanced over at Joanna. She gave me a sleepy smile and then closed her eyes. I did the same.
When we woke, the mountains were behind us.
MADDIE
Nine weeks before
Ian is in Nigeria looking after a small group of firefighters from Boots & Coots who are preparing to extinguish an enormous oil well fire outside Port Harcourt, where there was a suicide bombing last month. These oil fires can take weeks to put out and then there’s a massive cleanup. He told me ninety days, but the truth is I don’t know when he’s coming home.
I’m headed to see Cami J and wondering if part of today’s session will be another list of things that scare me. If so, this time I will include Nigeria’s Boko Haram jihadists and their fanatic leader. He was on television briefly last night and I rewound it six times. He chomped his gum and gleefully declared, “Guess what? I abducted your girls!”
As I watched the documentary clip again and again I thought about the two hundred girls they took like it was nothing. That’s the world now. No consequences. That’s where Ian’s been for the past three weeks and where he’ll be stuck for some time to come.
Author Bio
Annie Ward has a BA in English literature from UCLA and an MFA in screenwriting from the American Film Institute. Her first short screenplay, Strange Habit, starred Adam Scott and won awards at the Aspen and Sundance Film Festivals. She lives in Kansas with her two sons and British husband, whom she met in the Balkans. She was recently awarded a Fulbright scholarship and An Escape to Create artist’s residency.
Author Links: Website * Facebook * Twitter * Goodreads * Instagram
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