The Counting Game

"Sinéad Nolan is one to watch." —Karin Slaughter, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"Nolan cranks up the suspense to the maximum, mixing mounting dread and wells of compassion before arriving at a truly surprising finale." —The New York Times

When a teenager disappears from her small Irish town and a therapist is brought in to break the silence of the only witness, old wounds are opened in a search that becomes a race against time—perfect for fans of God of the Woods and The Witch Elm.

Southwest Ireland, 1995: Two children go into the woods. Only one comes out.

When thirteen-year-old Saoirse Kellough goes missing, panic grips a rural Irish community. Saoirse is not the first girl to disappear in the forest, rumored by locals to be haunted, and the only witness—her troubled younger brother, Jack—refuses to speak. Saoirse went missing when they were playing the Counting Game, a ritual believed to ward off evil, and Jack has sworn to protect the forest’s secrets.

Freya Hemmings, a psychotherapist still healing from a loss of her own, is brought in to help investigators break Jack’s silence. As the race to find Saoirse alive accelerates, the search threatens to unravel a family facing the unthinkable. Everyone is a suspect, and the closer Freya and Jack become, the more danger they find themselves in.

Haunting and emotional, The Counting Game is a suspenseful debut from an unmissable new voice in crime fiction.

Sinéad Nolan grew up playing in the forests and on the beaches of leafy County Dublin, Ireland. She was a regular freelance feature writer for the Sunday World and the Irish Independent and has had short stories shortlisted for the Momaya Press Awards and the Francis McManus Awards for RTE Radio. Apart from writing, she works in private practice as a BACP Registered Counsellor seeing clients in central London.