Guardian

A telephone ringing in the dead of night signals the beginning of a journey into fear as Mary Anne Carpenter, newly separated and struggling to raise her two children alone, hears the shocking news: two thousand miles away, her friends, the Wilkensons, are suddenly, inexplicably dead, their only child, Mary Anne's godchild, abruptly orphaned. Even as Mary Anne rushes to embrace her young charge the disturbing questions mount. Was it merely a chance — though tragic — mishap that took these lives? Or was it murder?

Soon Mary Anne will begin to suspect an even more sinister force at work. For Joey Wilkenson, a sad and silent adolescent, seems to harbor secrets beyond her most nightmarish imaginings.

Soon, as early winter closes in on the majestic, lonely spot where the Wilkensons have built their beautiful ranch, transforming the mountain landscape into a forbidding place of blinding storms and dangerous darkness, Joey's sly secretiveness, his volatile temper, begin to turn Mary Anne's tender feelings to icy fear.

And soon, as a series of horrific murders draws ever closer to her young family — killings that suggest some raging animal, or worse, and defy solution by a desperate police force — Mary Anne begins to know the true meaning of terror.

In Guardian, the forces of nature and the forces of evil combine chillingly in a complexly-woven novel of psychological suspense, as a peaceful haven becomes a prison where, alone in the howling winter whiteness, Mary Anne Carpenter must guard her children against an unseen, ever more insatiable killer — a killer who is closer than she thinks...