The Gates of Evangeline

For fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn, THE GATES OF EVANGELINE is the addictive first book in a fantastic new crime series, that will have you guessing until the very end.

This sweeping, hypnotic debut is from a young American with a fresh voice and a taste for the lush, Gothic world of the American Deep South… The incestuous atmosphere is beautifully evoked.. Eerie and haunting, the novel is as addictive as mint juleps served by the servants in white gloves on the veranda… and just as creepy.

A grieving mother's eerie dreams turn out to be clues to an even eerier mystery.

In this spooky thriller, everyone’s a suspect and the plot twists will keep you guessing.

What a delicious book! Gripping and atmospheric - with a heart-stopping twist - The Gates of Evangeline is an imaginative blend of sothern gothic, family epic, and spooky whodunit. Trust me: you won't just read Hester Young's debut, you will absorb this gorgeous novel using all 'six' senses.

Jillian Medoff, bestselling author of I COULDN'T LOVE YOU MORE and HUNGER POINT

Part riveting murder mystery, part supernatural ghost story, Hester Young’s The Gates of Evangelineis an atmospheric novel armed with a stash of complex thrills and spooky chills… At times dark and disturbing, other times optimistic and heart-warming, The Gates of Evangeline is the type of book I wished would never end. Thankfully the Charlie Cates series is just beginning.

The Gates of Evangelineis gripping, with a tremendous sense of place.

Hester Young's The Gates of Evangeline is not just a riveting story about the search for a long-missing child. It's also a powerful and haunting examination of a mother's grief and her long road to recovery. Hester Young's protagonist, Charlotte 'Charlie' Cates, is tough and vulnerable, wounded and fearless, and I simply could not stop reading this thrilling, beautifully written southern gothic mystery. I can't wait for the next entry in this captivating new series.

David Bell, author of CEMETERY GIRL and SOMEBODY I USED TO KNOW

Step through The Gates of Evangeline with Charlotte Cates, a grief-stricken Northerner tasked with uncovering a Southern dynasty's dark secrets. Hair-raising and heart-rending, Hester Young's first novel is one of buried shame, children taken too soon, and, ultimately, of immense true love that binds across the mortal divide.

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times best-selling author of Bittersweet

The hothouse atmosphere of Evangeline and the tortuous and tangled motives of its denizens make for an enjoyable puzzle box of a mystery. An eerie but inviting debut.

In Hester Young's haunted Louisiana, the ghostly labyrinth of the past opens its great doors to deliver up a lush gothic thriller. The Gates of Evangeline is a darkly marvelous debut, a classic whodunnit stitched with otherworldly chills.

Jedediah Berry, author of the Hammett-prize winning The Manual of Detection

A grieving mother but a determined journalist.  What a box of mysteries this story is. Life, death, heartache and hope for the future. I loved it. Very much a book you don’t want to put down. A  fabulous first novel. I hope this is the first of many, particularly if ‘Charlie Cates’ is involved.

Young’s The Gates of Evangeline is a stunning debut novel. A lyrical, haunting, heart-wrenching work of suspense with echoes of du Maurier, Hitchcock, and King.

Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

Haunting, heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful...Young handles the spectral elements with restraint as her tremendously sympathetic heroine seeks to build a new life after death.

A dreamy, Southern gothic mystery…Young’s novel is powerful and captivating.

Hester Young holds a Master’s degree in English with a Creative Writing concentration from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Before turning to writing full time, she worked as a teacher in Arizona and New Hampshire. She lives with her husband and two children in New Jersey.

For fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn, THE GATES OF EVANGELINE is the addictive first book in a fantastic new crime series, that will have you guessing until the very end. 
 
When grieving mother and New York journalist Charlie Cates begins to experience vivid dreams about children after her only son passes away, she’s sure that she’s lost her mind. Yet she soon realizes these are not the hallucinations of a bereaved mother. They are messages and warnings that will help Charlie and the children she sees—if she can make sense of them. 
 
The disturbing images lead her from her home in suburban New York City to small-town Louisiana, where she takes a commission to write a true-crime book based on the case of Gabriel Deveau, the young heir to a wealthy and infamous Southern family, whose kidnapping thirty years ago has never been solved. There she meets the Deveau family, none of whom are telling the full truth about the night Gabriel disappeared. And as she uncovers long-buried secrets of love, money, betrayal, and murder, the facts begin to implicate those she most wants to trust—and her visions reveal an evil closer than she could have imagined.

Hester Young

A woman is driving through the desert wasteland. Ahead of her, the road shimmers in the heat. 
 
 
 
 
She is running from a dream that is so terrifyingly real that it haunts her waking hours. 
 
 
 
The pop of a bullet, the rush of blood through water ... Is her vision a premonition, a message that she and her daughter are in danger? 
 
 
Then Charlie learns that the mother she never knew has been murdered in Arizona. 
 
 
 
Soon she must confront her past, and untangle a web of secrets that will reveal the truths of her own nightmare… 
 
 
Praise for Hester Young 
 
‘A lyrical, haunting, heart-wrenching work of suspense with echoes of du Maurier, Hitchcock, and King.’ - Robert B. Parker, New York Times bestselling author of The Devil Wins. 
 
‘Powerful and Haunting’ - David Bell, author of Cemetary Girl and Somebody I Used to Know. 
'Hair-raising and heart-rending’ - Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times bestselling author of Bittersweet.

Hester Young

Praise for The Shimmering Road

Thoroughly enjoyable

Books by Hester Young

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter