Never Far Away
Nina Morgan used to work for a powerful international security firm described by a US senator as “Blackwater on steroids.” When she agreed to testify about crimes committed by the head of the outfit, Corson Lowery, he ordered a couple of his mercenaries to kill her. To protect her husband and their two small children, Nina paid the killers to fake her death, and she disappeared. She has reinvented herself as Leah Trenton, a wilderness tour guide in northern Maine.
Her husband, Doug, is the only one who knows she is alive. The children believe their mother is dead—she died so long ago they don’t even remember her—though they get occasional postcards from their “Aunt Leah.” Doug has drilled thirteen-year-old Hailey on one instruction: if anything ever happens to him, she has a number she must dial. That number will send a pager message to “Aunt Leah.” An aunt they’ve never met.
When Doug dies in a freak accident, Hailey follows that instruction, and “Leah”—as their aunt—comes to take custody of Hailey and her eleven-year-old brother Nick. She brings them to Maine, where she hopes her Leah Trenton identity will keep them all safe. The children don’t know she’s really their mother.
But the disappearance of the children triggers Carson Lowery’s attention. He realizes Nina must be alive, and orders assassins to find and kill her. Leah is desperate to protect her children, and would even sacrifice her life for theirs. She leverages her former contacts in the shady world of international security, as well as her wilderness knowledge, to do battle with Lowery and the hit men he’s sent.
ThIs compelling novel continues with many twists and turns, a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat right to the end.
Michael Koryta was born in 1982 in Bloomington, Indiana. Some writers are late bloomers; he was the opposite. By the time he was sixteen he’d decided he wanted to become a crime novelist. He interned for a private investigator while in high school, and enrolled in the criminal justice program at Indiana University. While still a student, he wrote part time for the Bloomington Herald Times and continued occasional work for the private investigator—and wrote novels on the side.
His first novel was published when he was 20: Tonight I Said Goodbye was nominated for an Edgar and won the St. Martin's Press/Private Eye Writers of America Best First Novel prize. His second novel, Sorrow’s Anthem, was published before Koryta finished his bachelor’s degree.
He continued working as a journalist for the Herald TImes, winning numerous awards for his journalism, while writing his third novel. By the time he was 25 he’d become a full-time novelist. Now, at age 39, he has published fourteen thrillers under his own name and another under the penname of Scott Carson; a second Carson book is expected out later in 2021.
He’s known for clear, suspenseful writing with exciting plots and believable characters. He credits his experience as a newspaper reporter, and as an investigator, as major contributors to his writing strengths.
He and his wife, Christine, divide their time between Bloomington and Camden, Maine.
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