Antoinette Van Heugten

Max Parkman autistic and whip–smart, emotionally fragile and aggressive is perfect in his mother's eyes. Until he's accused of murder.

Attorney Danielle Parkman knows her teenage son Max's behaviour has been getting worse – he's been using drugs and lashing out. But she can't accept the diagnosis she receives at a top–notch adolescent psychiatric facility that her son is deeply disturbed. Dangerous.

Until she finds Max, unconscious and bloodied, beside a patient who has been brutally stabbed to death.

Trapped in a world of doubt and fear, barred from contacting Max, Danielle clings to the belief that her son is innocent. But has she, too, lost touch with reality? Is her son really a killer?

With the justice system bearing down on them, Danielle steels herself to discover the truth, no matter what it is. She'll do whatever it takes to the find the killer and to save her son from being destroyed by a system that's all too eager to convict him.

In a riveting exploration of the power the past wields over the present, Antoinette van Heugten transports readers back to the dark days of World War II. Thirty years after the conflict between Dutch resistance fighters and Holland's Nazi sympathisers, a child's life hangs in the balance.

It's the stuff of nightmares: Nora de Jong returns home from work one ordinary day to find her mother has been murdered. Her infant daughter is missing. And the only clue is the body of an unknown man on the living–room floor, clutching a Luger in his cold, dead hand.

Frantic to find Rose, Nora puts aside her grief and frustration to start her own search. But the contents of a locked metal box she finds in her parents' attic leave her with as many questions as answers, and suggest the killer was not a stranger. Saving her daughter means delving deeper into her family's darkest history, leading Nora half a world away to Amsterdam, where her own unsettled past and memories of painful heartbreak rush back to haunt her.

As Nora feverishly pieces together the truth from an old family diary, she's drawn back to a city under Nazi occupation, where her mother's alliances may have long ago sealed her own – and Rose's – fate.

USA TODAY bestselling author of Saving Max

Antoinette van Heugten combines the tender, unshakable bond between mother and son with an action–packed, edge–of–your–seat thriller. – International bestselling author Diane Chamberlain on Saving Max

Parents of children with serious behaviour problems will find their worst nightmares come alive in van Heugten's debut murder thriller…[with] more than one harrowing twist toward the end… –Publishers Weekly