The Key to Anchor Lake ✓

introduction

i n t r o d u c t i o n

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After her mother's tragic death and the discovery of an aunt she never knew about, Blaire Bloxham swaps her buzzing life and well-stamped passport for the crushingly small town of Anchor Lake, nestled in a desolate valley in the north of Scotland. Numb with grief and struggling to see eye to eye with her aunt, who hardly seems to leave the attic, Blaire can't wait to leave the moment she's arrived.

Until she stumbles across an advert for The Anchor Lakey, a podcast dedicated to the study of a mysterious book that details the town's dark history. Almost two decades ago, a handful of copies of The Key to Anchor Lake by Mary S. Nesbitt appeared in the town library, detailing the tragedies that have struck Anchor Lake every twenty-five years since the execution of seventeen suspected witches in 1619. The book and the podcast have become cult hits with residents, and while the last thing Blaire needs is to dwell on catastrophe, she does need a distraction.

She's soon gripped by the podcast, the mystery that hangs heavy over the town like a swirling fog of disaster and superstition, and the magnetic narrator. When Sukie takes Blaire under her wing and invites her to the book club dedicated to Nesbitt's history, it's a bit of fun. A way to avoid her aunt, and her crushing grief. An excuse to get out of the house.

But this year marks twenty-five years since the last tragedy and the four-hundredth anniversary of the slaughter of seventeen innocent women. The more Blaire digs, the more she's convinced that something terrible is going to happen, and the only way to understand it is to crack the key.

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so, you all know by now that i hate writing introductions more than any other part of the book-writing process. over the past couple of weeks, this book has become my baby - i've spent every spare moment hand writing over 10,000 words of plans and now, 80 pages later, this book is plotted out from start to finish. it's one of those stories that hit me like a truck and demanded to be written. i only hope i'm not jinxing it by posting this!