Give Me the Child: the most gripping psychological thriller of the year. Mel McGrath

      

      MEL McGRATH is an Essex girl, the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling family memoir Silvertown. She won the John Llewellyn-Rhys/Mail on Sunday award for Best Writer Under 35 for her first book, Motel Nirvana. She has published three Arctic mysteries featuring the Inuit detective Edie Kiglatuk, under the name MJ McGrath, two of which, White Heat and The Bone Seeker, were longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger.

      She is the co-founder and one of the moving lights of the website Killer Women, which has rapidly established itself as a key forum for crime writing in the UK. This new standalone marks a change in direction.

Copyright

      An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

      First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017

      Copyright © Mel McGrath 2017

      Mel McGrath asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008215613

       Version: 2018-07-18

      This one’s for my siblings.

      Contents

       Cover

       About the Author

       Title Page

Copyright

       Dedication

PART ONE: Then

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       PART TWO: Now

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

       CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

       CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

       CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

       CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

       CHAPTER THIRTY

       CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

       CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

       CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

       CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

       EPILOGUE

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       About the Publisher

PART ONE