The Last Safe Place

In the deepest, darkest midnight of her soul, Gabriella writes a novel, a horror thriller about demons... and then one of them crawls up out of the pages and confronts her face to face. A deranged, fanatical stalker who believes he is The Beast of Babylon from her novel turns up at a book signing and then comes after her to claim her as his bride. And to sacrifice her son, Ty, as an offering to their unholy union. When Gabriella narrowly escapes the crazy fan’s clutches, she leaps into panicked action. She, Ty, Ty's grandfather, Theo--the crusty old stand-up comic called Slap Yo Mama Carmichael, and their golden retriever Puppy Dog--run for their lives, back to the only place in Gabriella's life where she ever felt safe. But once there, she discovers that facing the demons from her past may be harder and more dangerous than facing the one who stalks her. As Ty and Theo battle their own, personal monsters, Gabriella is drawn into a romance with man shrouded in mystery who carries a guilt she can't even begin to imagine. The stalker who hunts Gabriella and her family tracks them down and corners his prey as a full moon rides high in the night sky and lightning explodes on the mountaintop. Then all their lives and demons collide in a final, apocalyptic celebration of one man's madness. Gabriella's only hope lies in a mystery from her childhood—the unexplainable power of 2,000-year-old tree. Is it strong enough to save them? In the suspense-filled, thriller ending, can a single, perfect bristlecone pine somehow determine the fate of them all? FROM THE AUTHOR Two years ago, I stood on the windswept peak of Mount Princeton in the Colorado Rockies. The view from there is breath-taking. The whole Arkansas River Valley spreads out before you, and at 14,000 feet, you can see it all. But mostly I stared transfixed at Mount Antero, the 14,000-footer to the north of Mount Princeton, as a summer storm attacked it. Dark clouds hurried across the sky. Lightning bolts dropped on the peak like a hail of burning arrows. I pushed through a stand of bent and twisted trees to get a better look, didn't know until later that I had watched the storm wear itself out from a grove of bristlecone pine trees. The sign on the door of the chalet on Mt. Princeton said the trees were a protected species, the oldest living things on earth. It said some of them had been dated at more than 4,000 years old. Those trees had been alive when Jesus walked the earth. What if ...? And a novel was born. ABOUT THE AUTHOR If Ninie Hammon had to choose between telling stories and eating, she would starve to death. Ninie spent a quarter of a century as a journalist before she tried her hand at action/suspense novels (with a smattering of romance thrown in, too, of course) and discovered it was a whole lot more fun to make up the facts than report them. Since then, she has published a biography, God Said Yes, and six novels: Sudan, The Memory Closet, Home Grown, Five Days in May, Black Sunshine and The Last Safe place. Her seventh novel, When Butterflies Cry, will be released in the fall of 2013. Each of her novels is a fast-paced, suspense-filled thriller peopled with gloriously complex characters who drag the reader into the story to live it with them. A native of Muleshoe, Texas, Ninie now lives a mildly vagabond life. She and her husband, Tom, travel between their home in Louisville, KY and one in the village of Great Linford in Buckinghamshire north of London where Tom directs Young Life in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Scandinavia. The couple has six children and eight grandchildren. Thanks so much for you help. If you have any questions, please let me know. Blessings, Ninie Hammon