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1 Extract : The Chilling Riley James , 2024 extract novel (The Chilling)
— Appears in: Kill Your Darlings [Online] , September 2024;
2 y separately published work icon The Chilling Riley James , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2024 28223937 2024 single work novel thriller

'An unputdownable thriller set in the pressure-cooker environment of an Antarctic winter.

'An isolated research station. A storm approaching.
There's nowhere to run. But so much to hide.

'Keen to flee the wreckage of her marriage, Australian scientist Kit Bitterfeld accepts a coveted winter research position at Macpherson Station in Antarctica. On the way there, Kit and her fellow researchers field a distress call from a nearby ship. By the time they reach the vessel it is on fire and the crew has vanished. A lone survivor is found, but he can't remember who he is or what has happened.

'They bring the survivor, eventually identified as geophysicist Nick Coltheart, to Macpherson but it's clear that something is wrong. More and more of Kit's colleagues are acting strangely. And she can't shake the suspicion that Nick knows more than he's letting on. With the winter darkness setting in, Kit must figure out the truth before they are completely cut off from the outside world. But is the danger lurking out on the ice, or is it closer than she thinks?

'The Chilling offers a compellingly icy twist on the winter thriller setting, transplanting the most haunting elements of Scandi noir to the southern hemisphere, and announces Riley James as a brilliant new talent writing in a fresh corner of Australian crime fiction.' (Publication summary)

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