First published 2019
Hannah crouches in the school library, pressing bandages against her teacher's wounds while footsteps echo in the corridor outside. A gunman has invaded their progressive English boarding school on a bitter winter morning. In the theater across campus, teacher Daphne continues Macbeth rehearsals, believing the bunker-like space offers safety and distraction keeps her students calm. Outside in the snowy woods, Rafi searches desperately for his little brother Basi, a Syrian boy who vanished when the kindergarten evacuated. Beyond the school gates, mother Beth waits in anguish for news of her teenage son Jamie, still missing somewhere inside. As minutes tick past, questions multiply. Who is the shooter? Does he work alone? Why target this particular school? The terrifying answers emerge piece by piece while students and teachers fight to survive three hours that will change everything. This is a story about ordinary people facing extraordinary terror, about the bonds that hold communities together when violence tears them apart.
Genres: fiction, drama, mystery, crime, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, fast-paced, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, ordinary-people-in-extraordinary-circumstances, survival
Setting: England, Syria
Period: 21st-century
368 pages · Paperback · Boekerij
Content warnings: violence