Girl Number One

There’s a body in the woods. At least, there was. Eleanor Blackwood saw it on her morning run: a young woman, strangled to death.

But the police can find nothing—no body, no sign of a crime—and even Ellie has to wonder if it was a trick of her mind, a gruesome vision conjured up by grief. It’s eighteen years to the day since she witnessed her own mother’s murder on the same woodland spot. But what if she really did see what she thinks she saw? What if the body was left there for Ellie alone to find?

And there’s one detail Ellie can’t shake: a deliberate number three on the dead woman’s forehead. When she discovers a second body, this one bearing the number two, Ellie is convinced they are not messages but threats. The killer is on a countdown: but who is girl number one?

Revised edition: This edition of Girl Number One includes editorial revisions.

Jane Holland is a Gregory Award–winning poet and novelist who also writes commercial fiction under the pseudonyms Victoria Lamb, Elizabeth Moss, Beth Good and Hannah Coates. Girl Number One hit #1 in the UK Kindle store in December 2015. Jane lives with her husband and young family near the North Cornwall/Devon border. A homeschooler, her hobbies include photography and growing her own vegetables.