'No matter how big and fast and strong you are, how heavily armed or well trained, there's always going to be someone out there who is bigger, faster, or stronger. Always.'

To Aud Torvingen violence is a tool, one to be employed with precision. And it can be taught-but when she teaches a women's self-defence class in Atlanta the consequences shake her to the core.

To regroup, she travels to Seattle to meet her Norwegian diplomat mother and her mother's new husband while handling what should be a run-of-the-mill real estate fraud. But her commercial property is being used as a movie set, big money is in play, and someone is sabotaging the production.

If Jack Reacher had a sister, she'd be Aud Torvingen . . . he would love her but he'd be a little scared of her, too -- LEE CHILD
Without Aud Torvingen it's difficult to see how there could have been a Lisbeth Salander -- VAL McDERMID
Visceral, unflinching, superbly executed, ultimately optimistic: Aud as in audacious -- FRANCIS SPUFFORD
Razor sharp -- THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Nicola Griffith is the Lambda, Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author of nine novels, including Hild and Spear. She holds a PhD from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and is known for both her work on identifying and tracing bias in the literary ecosystem and as a consultant on disability issues. She is a dual US/UK citizen and lives with her wife, fellow writer Kelley Eskridge in Seattle, in a house on the edge of a ravine.