This title is # 15 on the Best Indie Books of 2019. All votes and nominations were counted. I am pleased to introduce new stories to readers, so please check out this book.
White Oaks by Jill Hand
Synopsis:
Aimee Trapnell reluctantly leaves her apartment on Manhattan’s Central Park West to return to her childhood home in Georgia for her father’s ninetieth birthday. Also on hand are her two brothers, wily Marsh and ne’er-do-well Trainor. With a forty-billion-dollar inheritance at stake, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to make the old man happy.
To their shock they learn that what their father wants for his birthday is to kill someone. He doesn’t care who it is. He just wants to know what it’s like to commit murder.
Betrayal, double-dealing, and fast-paced action set the Trapnells on a collision course with an unexpected villain. Their journey takes them from the swamps of Georgia, to Italy’s glittering Amalfi coast, to rugged Yellowstone National Park.
Excerpt:
Blanton looked off into the middle distance, biding his time and letting the tension build. Then he swept his glacial gray gaze over his children. “Y’all asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I told y’all I’d think on it and get back to y’all.”
Aimee, Trainor, and Marsh nodded their heads. It didn’t sound like he was getting married, which was good, but they didn’t like the expression in his eyes. Something about it hinted strongly that he wasn’t about to request they make a donation to a charity in his name, or bake him a cake.
“That’s right, Daddy,” Aimee said.
The three of them wondered what the old man was going to ask for. He was obviously hesitant to name it, so it might not be strictly legal, but whatever it was, they’d get it for him. There was too much riding on it to refuse. He couldn’t live forever, and he was currently worth around forty billion dollars, by best reckoning.
It’s something weird, Aimee thought, noting the old man’s reticence. It’s probably a prostitute, or several prostitutes, or maybe even several dwarf prostitutes.
It’s gotta be drugs, Trainor thought. The old guy wants to try some cocaine or who knows? Maybe even meth, and that’s totally fine because I can help him out in that department.
Oh, God, thought Marsh, noting his father’s solemn expression. Whatever it is, it’s bad.
Marsh was correct. It was bad. A bevy of the most degenerate prostitutes imaginable bearing a kilo of the purest cocaine would seem like a Sunday School picnic compared to what Blanton wanted for his ninetieth birthday.
“I want to kill a man,” he told them.
There was a shocked silence. Finally Trainor spoke. “Anybody in particular?”
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