“In Spark, Courtney Elizabeth Mauk has somehow managed to write a book that’s both chilling and heart-rending. It’s a masterfully unnerving portrait of dissolution: of a family, of a life, of a mind. Her artfully distanced prose gets under your skin like little else. After you pick this book up, it won’t put you down.” –Kelly Braffet, author of Josie and Jack and Last Seen Leaving
Spark excerpt on The Nervous Breakdown
Twenty years after pyromaniac Delphie kills a family of four, he is released from prison to his sister Andrea’s care. Soon after, she finds her carefully ordered life coming apart. Her efforts to keep her brother on a steady path lead her off course, into the secret corners of New York, where danger is difficult to gauge and a spark, once ignited, is hard to extinguish.
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“Spark is a stunning debut–smart, sexy, and masterfully paced.” – Thorn Kief Hillsbery, author of War Boy and What We Do Is Secret
“Page by beautifully written page, Courtney Elizabeth Mauk careens us into a world where in our misguided efforts to protect those we love we lose sight of all boundaries. Spark is a powerful novel not because it dares to go into dark territories but because it vividly illuminates the very ordinary ways we might lose ourselves in the effort to save others from potential errors. Mauk has created a mature debut where love, obligation, fear, desire and doubt twist in unpredictable and surprising turns.” –Victoria Redel, author of The Border of Truth and Loverboy
For Spark reviews, please go here.