LOST GIRLS **AWARD WINNER**

In Andrew Pyper's haunting first novel, the disappearance of two young girls sets in motion a nightmarish journey into darkness, as a young defense attorney returns to his beleaguered hometown to try a bizarre and macabre murder case. A gothic thriller that will catch you off guard at every turn, Lost Girls is more than a story about a chilling crime and its aftermath; it is an edgy exploration of terrors real, terrors imagined, and the ones that lie somewhere in between.

Attorney Bartholomew Christian Crane doesn't belong in the town of Murdoch. And Murdoch, a small city by the shores of Lake St. Christopher, doesn't want him there. Even Crane's client, a teacher accused of murdering two young girls, his own students, doesn't seem to care if Crane gets him off or not. But Crane loves nothing better than turning guilt into innocence, lies into truth, and winning at all costs. His boss's motto for defending a client: Don't just deny, blame someone else. Now Crane will try to do just that--until the case takes an unexpected turn, pulling Crane from the mooring of his big-city smugness and shattering the icy cocoon around his heart.

For as Crane begins to piece together a defense for his client, he finds himself being drawn into a bizarre legend at the heart of the town's history--a legend that is slowly coming alive before his eyes. Unnerved by visions he sees on Murdoch's beleaguered streets, by a woman he meets in a seedy strip club, by the ringing of a telephone down the deserted hallway of his run-down motel, Crane is beginning to suspect that what is happening to him is happening for a reason. And that the two lost girls of Murdoch may be intricately connected to the town's shameful history, and to a dark episode in his own long-forgotten past.

From its haunting opening to its shocking climax, Lost Girls dares to take us into dangerous territory. At once a classic murder mystery, an intricate legal thriller, and a novel of pure psychological terror, Lost Girls puts a powerful twist on all our expectations and confirms Andrew Pyper's place as one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary fiction.

Andrew Pyper was born and raised in Stratford, Ontario. He received an undergraduate and master's degree in English literature from McGill University in Montreal, as well as a law degree from the University of Toronto.  His collection of stories, Kiss Me, released only in Canada, was hailed "an astonishing piece of work" by The Globe and Mail. He lives in Toronto. Lost Girls is his first novel.