Deliver Me

Abby Brooke, the 24-year-old heroine of British author Cole’s intriguing debut, has just started teaching art at a school in Gloucestershire, where she lives with her sister and brother-in-law, when her longtime doctor tells her she’s two months pregnant. Initially confused because she broke up with her boyfriend more than a year earlier, she eventually concludes she must have been raped at a drunken New Year’s Eve party she barely remembers. One by one, Abby tracks down all the male guests from the party to confront them in the hope of reconstructing what happened that evening. Meanwhile, someone is stalking her, leaving both affectionate and threatening notes and texts, which reveal her stalker knows about her pregnancy and other intimate details of her life. The suspense rises after Abby decides not to keep the baby, against the advice of her sister, who then mysteriously disappears. The evenly paced narrative contains no superfluous subplots to distract the reader as it builds to a truly surprising ending. Cole is off to a promising start.[em] (June) [/em]