Birdie lost everything when her son died. Now, on track to rebuild her life, she has to evade her abusive partner Russ's rage and manipulations while also worrying about a home-invading serial killer that has descended on her community. Told through multiple POVs, from a decomposing murder victim to Birdie's day-to-day battle with domestic violence and grief to the horrific crimes of the killer, Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day will shock, disgust, and break your heart as the dark secrets unfold and Birdie does whatever she feels is necessary to protect the ones she loves.
"Of course you could use certain buzzwords like "brutal" and "shocking" to describe Emma E. Murray's novel Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day. However, those words would immediately fail to capture the unflinching cruelty and viciousness layered within the pages of this brilliant and deeply unpleasant novel centered around abuse, trauma, and decay. Despite this richly textured nastiness, there's also a distinct beauty, an attraction toward the grotesque and the undesirable woven throughout this masterful work. Emma E. Murray is one of the most original and fearless writers of new transgressive fiction." -Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke
"Everyone in this book is damaged, and Emma Murray is telling us how these wounds fester into diseased thoughts, the devaluing of human life, and the propagation of harm through rage and despair....A book for the hopeless and damned." -Charlene Elsby, author of The Devil Thinks I'm Pretty and Red Flags
"Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day is the stuff of domestic nightmares. Murray's novel gives the reader a fly-on-the-wall look at a monster. But fretting silently amidst the blood, guts, and depravity, is its protagonist-grieving, desperate, and verging on breakdown. An eerily terrifying tale that brings true crime hypotheticals to life, and imbues them with fragility, strength, and bone-deep sorrow." -Carson Winter, author of The Psychographist and Soft Targets
"There are some authors who I stand up and applaud immediately after reading their work and Emma E. Murray is one of them. Murray's writing is beautiful, but brutal, psychological, yet spiritual. Her examination of society, and of people, their depths of despair, and the effects of the machinations of manipulations is heart-wrenching. Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day is a socio-psychological and gruesome analysis and reconstruction of what and who we are, how we became that, and why." -Cynthia Pelayo, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Vanishing Daughters
