Sister Mine

Set in the fictional mining town of Jolly Mount, Pennsylvania, Sister Mine is told in the wry, honest and sometimes heartbreakingly poignant voice of Shae-Lynn Penrose, an offbeat ex-cop and now sole proprietor of the local cab company. Two years previously, five of Shae-Lynn's friends were catapulted into media stardom when the pit in which they were working exploded. They survived five days underground and emerged as heroes - but neither they nor their town have been the same since.

Still, things are fine - until Shae-Lynn's kid sister Shannon, presumed dead, walks back into town. Where has she been for the last seventeen years? Who is the father of her unborn baby? And why is the mob on her heels? Shae-Lynn herself, beaten black and blue as a child by her brute of a miner father, has plenty of her own demons to confront - and one or two secrets she's never told...

With all the heartache of Jodi Picoult, but served up with a blackly humorous twist and set in the sort of small working-class town that Karin Slaughter has made so familiar, Sister Mine is redemptive, embracing - and, above, all, unputdownable.