Our Last Wild Days - by Anna Bailey (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From the author of the "irresistible" (Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author) Where the Truth Lies, an atmospheric novel about a young woman who searches for answers after her estranged friend is found dead in the bayou of their rural Louisiana hometown.

The Labasques aren't like other families.

Living in a shack out in the swamps, they made do by hunting down alligators and other animals. To the good people of Jacknife, Louisiana, they are troublemakers and outcasts, the kind of people you wouldn't want in your community.

So, when Cutter Labasque is found face down in the muddy swamp, no one seems to care, not even her two brothers. The only person who questions the official verdict of suicide is Cutter's childhood friend, Loyal May, who has just returned home to care for her mother. When she left town at eighteen years old, she betrayed Cutter. Now with a ragtag group from the local paper where she works, Loyal goes in search of answers, uncovering a web of deceit and corruption that implicates those in town. It may be too late to apologize to Cutter, but Loyal has restitution in mind.

Weaving through the swamps and bayous of rural Louisiana, Our Last Wild Days is an atmospheric, smoldering suspense about our darker impulses--and how to set things right.

Review Quotes

"Loyal May returns to her small hometown with unfinished business weighing on her. What unfolds from there will make you feel the heat of southern Louisiana seeping off the page. Anna Bailey is the master of things that move in the dark, with language so lush you feel like you could reach out and touch it. Our Last Wild Days is moody, visceral, stunning--don't miss it."
--Hayley Scrivenor, internationally best-selling author of Dirt Creek and Girl Falling

"Our Last Wild Days has everything I love in a suspense novel: a vivid and gritty setting, characters with sharp edges, atmosphere that seeps through the pages, and a dark, gripping mystery. Best of all is Anna Bailey's exquisite prose, filled with lines worth tattooing and passages worth framing. This is a book that will sink into your bones."
--Megan Collins, author of Cross My Heart and The Family Plot

"A bewitching slice of southern Gothic, in Our Last Wild Days,
Anna Bailey cements thier reputation for writing thought-provoking, character-driven crime fiction."
--Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and The Blue Hour

"A propulsive, bold and brutal slice of Southern Gothic brilliance. Anna Bailey writes so beautifully about family, friendship, loyalty and betrayal, yet also delivers a tough and truly atmospheric thriller."
--Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark

"Raw and unflinching, Anna Bailey's Our Last Wild Days is about the mystery of how anyone survives as much as it is the mystery of how one woman didn't. In a beautifully observed story brimming with singular characters, small-town Louisiana still manages to steal the show, with Bailey playing anthropologist as much as fiction writer, painting a vivid portrait of a South that feels both familiar and fantastical. Out of alligators, fox skulls, violence, poverty, and love, they weave a spell that lasts from the first page until the shocking, unforgettable ending. This is a stunner."
--Ashley Winstead, bestselling author of Midnight is the Darkest Hour

About the Author

Anna Bailey is a Sunday Times (London) bestselling author from Gloucestershire. Their debut novel, Tall Bones (published in the US as Where the Truth Lies), inspired by their experiences living in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, was nominated for the Theakstons Crime Novel of the Year and Goldsboro Glass Bell awards, as well as the Prix Nouvelles Voix du Polar. Their short stories, based on their travels through rural America, have been dramatised for BBC Radio 4, including "Long Way to Come for a Sip of Water", which was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. They live in Bordeaux with their wife.