The Vanishing Season

Winner of the Minotaur BooksMystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Competition, Joanna Schaffhausens accomplished debut The Vanishing Season will grip readers from the opening page to the stunning conclusion. Ellery Hathaway knows a thing or two about serial killers, but not through her police training. She's an officer in sleepy Woodbury, MA, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers.

No one there knows she was once victim number seventeen in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only one who lived. When three people disappear from her town in three yearsall around her birthdayEllery fears someone knows her secret.

Someone very dangerous. Her superiors dismiss her concerns, but Ellery knows the vanishing season is coming and anyone could be next. She contacts the one man she knows will believe her the FBI agent who saved her from a killer all those years ago.

Agent Reed Markham made his name and fame on the back of the Coben case, but his fortunes have since turned. His marriage is in shambles, his bosses think he's washed up, and worst of all, he blew a major investigation. When Ellery calls him, he cant help but wonder sure, he rescued her, but was she ever truly saved?

His greatest triumph is Ellerys waking nightmare, and now both of them are about to be sucked into the past, back to the case that made them... with a killer who can't let go.

Schaffhausen wields a mean scalpel, skills developed in her years studying neuroscience. She has a doctorate in psychology, which reflects her long-standing interest in the brainhow it develops and the many ways it can go wrong. Previously, she worked for ABC News, writing for programs such as World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and 2020.

She lives in the Boston area with her husband and daughter. The Vanishing Season is her first novel.