The Dry

"Jane Harper’s debut novel opens with three dead bodies – an apparent murder-suicide – in a small Australian town beset by drought. Federal agent Aaron Falk is lured back to his hometown for the funerals and soon ensnared in a place that is haunted by mysteries, past and present. The real horror of the story, though, is the water-starved landscape. There’s a moment when Falk is overcome by a moment of terrifying silence, but there’s no serial killer lurking in the quiet. Rather, he has discovered that the river he has known since childhood has run dry. For this reader, raised in the American West, that reality is scarier than just about anything I’ve ever read."