Dark Roads: A Novel

Chevy Stevens

Aug 2021 · Sold by St. Martin's Press

About this ebook

“Chevy Stevens is a brilliant and unique talent and Dark Roads is an instant classic. My hat’s off to her.” — C. J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Long Range

"My favorite Chevy Stevens book since Still Missing...The suspense builds with every page, and the ending is a complete shocker."—Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of The Wife Between Us

"Aptly named, Dark Roads is deep, dark, and unsettling. From the opening page, it’s clear you’re in the hands of a master storyteller...With brilliant characterizations, tight plotting, and a setting bound to give you chills, this is Stevens's finest book to date. A tour de force mystery you do not want to miss."—J.T. Ellison, New York Times bestselling author of Her Dark Lies

"Chevy Stevens is back and better than ever...Dark Roads is a chilling, pulse-pounding thriller that also tugs at the heartstrings. It's everything you've come to love from a master of the psych thriller genre!"— Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of The Other Mrs.

The Cold Creek Highway stretches close to five hundred miles through British Columbia’s rugged wilderness to the west coast. Isolated and vast, it has become a prime hunting ground for predators. For decades, young women traveling the road have gone missing. Motorists and hitchhikers, those passing through or living in one of the small towns scattered along the region, have fallen prey time and again. And no killer or abductor who has stalked the highway has ever been brought to justice.

Hailey McBride calls Cold Creek home. Her father taught her to respect nature, how to live and survive off the land, and to never travel the highway alone. Now he’s gone, leaving her a teenage orphan in the care of her aunt whose police officer husband uses his badge as a means to bully and control Hailey. Overwhelmed by grief and forbidden to work, socialize, or date, Hailey vanishes into the mountainous terrain, hoping everyone will believe she’s left town. Rumors spread that she was taken by the highway killer—who’s claimed another victim over the summer.

One year later, Beth Chevalier arrives in Cold Creek, where her sister Amber lived—and where she was murdered. Estranged from her parents and seeking closure, Beth takes a waitressing job at the local diner, just as Amber did, desperate to understand what happened to her and why. But Beth’s search for answers puts a target on her back—and threatens to reveal the truth behind Hailey’s disappearance...

Ratings and reviews

I received a free ARC of this excellent mystery thriller from Netgalley, Chevy Stevens, and St. Martin's Press. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read Dark Roads of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am so pleased to have found Chevy Stevens. She is an author I can heartily recommend to family and friends, an author I will follow. Dark Roads refers to the Cold Creek Highway, that long, lonely highway running 500 miles to the Pacific Coast in British Columbia, Canada. Every year during spring, a woman will disappear and may or may not be found dead somewhere along that highway. No killer has ever been pinpointed, been brought to justice. Hailey McBride is a Cold Creek native, raised by her father to respect the land, to exist off-grid, and to love the nature around them after her mother's death when she was very young. Her father unexpectedly dies when she is a young teenager, and she is entrusted to the care of her Aunt and her overbearing husband, a police officer with the Cold Creek Police Department. He controls everything Hailey loves, her home, her friends, her wilderness. She does, with the help of her best friend, disappear into the wilderness for about a year, hoping to be cast as a run-away but often viewed as another victim of the Dark Road Killer, until it becomes time for her to return to Cold Creek, to bring to light the dark secrets of her home town. Chevy Stevens loves the coastal stretch of British Columbia - it is obvious in every descriptive passage of this excellent novel. An all-together entertaining read, and one that I loved. I feel a Chevy Stevens binge coming on!

Super Creepy!! The highway was haunted, and so was the town of Cold Creek—the last real stop for gas and provisions before taking your chances on the dark road ahead. It was also the last place several women had been seen. This thriller will send a feeling of dread up your spine. Hailey’s father has died and she went to live with her Aunt and Uncle. But something is just not right and she wants to find out why. This twisted tale will keep you turning the pages until the stunning ending.

Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens. A great storyline kept me intrigued from beginning to end. I look forward to reading more books by Chevy Stevens.

About the author

CHEVY STEVENS lives on Vancouver Island with her husband and daughter. When she isn’t working on her next book, she’s hiking with her two dogs on her favorite mountain trails and spending time with her family. Chevy's current obsessions are vintage Airstreams, Hollywood memoirs, all things mid-century modern, and stand-up comedians--not necessarily in that order. Her books, including Still Missing, a New York Times bestseller and winner of the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, have been published in more than thirty countries.