Slash

Five years after final girl Ashley King survived the infamous Resort Massacre, she's found hanging in her basement by her fiance, Todd Matthews. The lone survivor of a team of urban explorers who ran into a faceless killing machine, she was never able to overcome the fear that the killer would find her and finish what he'd started. A puzzle addict, she leaves behind clues as to what really happened that night, clues that may reveal the identity of the killer the press has called The Wraith. With the help of his friends, Todd goes back to the crumbling Hayden Resort, a death-tinged ruin in the Catskills Mountains. The Hayden was once a premier destination in what was called the Borscht Belt. Now, it's rotting, abandoned, and the epicenter of a series of murders that goes back decades.

Todd and his friends are joined by Sharon Viola, broken and lost sister of Ash's best friend, Sheri, who was murdered the night of the Resort Massacre. Sneaking in at night on the cusp of winter, the Hayden is the definition of eerie and foreboding. They find the breadcrumbs of a deep, dark mystery that Ash had left behind, all but forgotten in her amnesia of the fateful night. An escaped Nazi had fled to America, masquerading as a cook in the resort's restaurant. The discovery of his true origins by the all Jewish staff was handled with brutal efficiency, lynch mob style. It was the first of what would be many more murders, escalating under the cover of secrecy after the resort burned down in the mid 1970s.

The Hayden may have been deserted, but it was never empty of fresh corpses. Someone, or something, has been murdering anyone who dares to wander amidst its crumbling buildings. It knows Todd and his friends have come, and there will be hell to pay for trespassing.

FLAME TREE PRESS is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launching in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.