Due to a scheduling conflict, the author talk by Laura McHugh has been rescheduled for Thursday, May 9, 2024 beginning at 7:00 p.m. in the Crystal Ballroom of Kentwood Hall on East St. Louis Street, across the street from the Shrine Mosque. 

This event is free and open to the public. Ample free parking is available at Kentwood Hall. 

Safe and Sound, the latest thriller novel from Missouri author Laura McHugh, will be published in April 2024. 

Here is the publisher’s synopsis:

As kids, Amelia and Kylee were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in Beaumont, Missouri, leaving blood all over the kitchen. Scrappy and driven, Grace, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and working at the meatpacking plant, had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better.

Now, as their own high school graduation looms, Amelia and Kylee dream about fleeing Beaumont, but the likelihood of that happening seems as low as that of Grace being found. When human remains are discovered in town, the sisters think they finally know who took Grace—but as they dig deeper into her past, they unearth long-buried secrets and a growing list of suspects.

Amelia and Kylee vow to find Grace, dead or alive. But as they draw closer to the truth and slip further into danger, they question how far someone would go to put a woman in her place, or to cover up a crime. The answer is worse than they could have imagined, and in the end, it won’t just be Grace they’re trying to save—they’ll have to fight for their lives.

Laura McHugh is the internationally bestselling author of The Weight of Blood, winner of the International Thriller Writers Award and Silver Falchion Award for best first novel; Arrowood, an International Thriller Writers Award finalist for best novel; The Wolf Wants In; and What’s Done in Darkness. McHugh lives in Missouri with her daughters