Fresh Ink: Spotlight on Debut Books of All Kinds

Despite their many differences, Detective Rachel Getty trusts her boss, Esa Khattak, implicitly. But she’s still uneasy at Khattak’s tight-lipped secrecy when he asks her to look into Christopher Drayton’s death. Drayton’s apparently accidental fall from a cliff doesn’t seem to warrant a police investigation, particularly not from Rachel and Khattak’s team, which handles minority-sensitive cases. But when she learns that Drayton may have been living under an assumed name, Rachel begins to understand why Khattak is tip-toeing around this case. It soon comes to light that Drayton may have been a war criminal with ties to the Srebrenica massacre of 1995.

If that’s true, any number of people might have had reason to help Drayton to his death, and a murder investigation could have far-reaching ripples throughout the community. But as Rachel and Khattak dig deeper into the life and death of Christopher Drayton, every question seems to lead only to more questions, with no easy answers. Had the specters of Srebrenica returned to haunt Drayton at the end, or had he been keeping secrets of an entirely different nature? Or, after all, did a man just fall to his death from the Bluffs?

In her spellbinding debut, Ausma Zehanat Khan has written a complex and provocative story of loss, redemption, and the cost of justice that will linger with readers long after turning the final page.

The author and her husband at TC!

 Read an excerpt HERE.

Read an interview with the author HERE.

Debut Author Spotlight 

Praise for the book:

"Beautiful and powerful." ~Publishers Weekly

"Khan’s stunning debut is a poignant, elegantly written mystery laced with complex characters." ~Kirkus Reviews

"Compelling and hauntingly powerful…anyone looking for an intensely memorable mystery should put this book at the top of their list." ~Library Journal

"A spectacular debut. Khan has written a heartbreaking book that stays with you long after you've put it down." ~Reza Aslan author of Zealot

"What a debut! Ausma Khan's The Unquiet Dead is a stirring mystery with unexpected, complex characters and a story that will keep you flipping pages until the wee hours." ~Jillane Hoffman, author of Pretty Little Things
 

"Evocative, surprising, and important. With its mesmerizingly personal voice, each lyrical sentence reveals another suspenseful layer of this complex and heartbreaking mystery. Harrowing and disturbing, its delicate strength creates tension on every page." ~Hank Phillippi Ryan, author of The Other Woman
"It would be enough that Ausma Zehanat Khan's The Unquiet Dead gives us an intriguing new detective team in Esa Khattak and Sgt. Rachel Getty. But it does far more than that. Khan creates an engrossing story that allows her to sift through the emotional rubble of real-world tragedy. In the end, it isn't just gripping. It's devastating." ~Steve Hockensmith , author of Holmes on the Range