Provocation (Paperback or Softback)

How much do you know about the people who keep you safe?

Madeline Kyle is pulling her life together after years of restrictive psychiatric care. She's got a new job at the State Library, her own place without doctors watching her every move, and meticulous routine and personal rules that hold her paranoia and eating disorder at bay. For the first time she can remember, Madeline's fate is entirely within her own hands.

Then a chance encounter with a library security guard puts Madeline on alert, every instinct warning his furtive interest hides a crueller purpose. She navigates each daily interaction looking for a clear sign of danger, but the guard's intent remains murky as the depths of a river in flood. Soon her therapist worries the new job and flat are too much, while friends and family fuss over Madeline's capacity to read the situation accurately.

As Madeline withdraws, retreating into the isolated tunnels beneath the library, events speed towards a violent endgame where she faces a terrifying choice: trust herself and risk her freedom if she acts against an innocent man, or trust others and hope her inaction doesn't allow a dangerous stalker to get too close.

For fans of Claire Mackintosh, CL Taylor, and Gillian Flynn, Provocation is the first book in the InSecurity Triptych-fast-paced and provocative psychological thrillers you can read in a single sitting.

Meg Vann trekked over glaciers with her toddler while pregnant, talked herself out of being mugged on the streets of New York, and was detained for no apparent reason at Uzbekistan airport while on a diplomatic visa. A crime writer, publisher, and scholar, and an abuse survivor, Meg has been making up thriller stories since before she could read and write. She seeks to confound assumptions about women's criminality and victimhood as part of a broader cultural understanding of gendered violence and the menace of intimacy. Meg established the Maher Fellowship for Women Writers for regional and Indigenous women to access creative writing development. She is an active member of Australian Crime Writers Association and Sisters in Crime, is the former CEO of Queensland Writers Centre, and regularly appears at writers festivals. Find out more at megvann.com