Five Shots

In her weather-beaten seaside bookshop, Jane Wragge trades in rare volumes and silence, communicating only by handwritten notes. Six years ago, she emptied a revolver into her husband's head-five shots, no explanation.

When true-crime writer Alex Morland arrives, researching "women who kill," Jane's carefully walled-off life begins to crack. Locals whisper to Alex about Jane's glamorous marriage to Mark, the parties, the perfect photographs-never the control, the threats, the secrets. Then come the midnight knocks. The postcard with one word: SOON.

As Alex digs, a missing woman's name surfaces: Lucy, gone eight years. Jane's private voice returns in a hidden notebook, the past unfurling in fragments. Following a trail of lies, Jane uncovers a house Mark kept hidden-and Lucy, alive but broken, in its basement.

Alex's final revelation binds them: Lucy is his mother. The truth behind the five gunshots is not just murder-it is rescue.

A taut novel of silence and survival, Five Shots is about the lives we destroy, the ones we save, and the price of speaking at last.