The Box in the Cuts

By Debra Castaneda

2020

First Published

4.04

Average Rating

278

Number of Pages

8H29M

Audio Length

Teenage girls are turning up dead in the Northern California town of Hillside. They are blonde, seventeen, and they have been burned to death.Samantha Reyes is a Hillside High School senior and the co-editor of her school’s newspaper, The Clarion. When a girl is discovered burned to death in the school bathroom, Samantha is determined to get to the bottom of it. At a local police press conference, Samantha plucks up the courage to ask the police chief whether spontaneous human combustion is being considered as a cause. Samantha’s question is caught on camera and goes viral.Furious, the school principal accuses Samantha and her co-editor Alfie Marquez of sensationalism and threatens the future of The Clarion. But Samantha is determined to solve the mystery behind the spate of murders, even if it means the paper gets shut down.For a start, Samantha knows there has been an outbreak of appliance fires around Hillside, beginning with the death of the first girl. There’s also the curious history of the Wirth Mansion, a local landmark with a dark past. And on top of that, Samantha’s blonde, seventeen-year-old best friend Destiny is starting to behave strangely.Battling to follow her investigative instincts, keep The Clarion alive, and protect her friend from a horrible fate, Samantha starts to see a pattern in the deaths. All too soon, she and her friends are drawn into a world of supernatural danger, and not even the police can protect them.Has Samantha’s investigation led her to a foe she can’t fight? Or is the key to the mystery closer than she first imagined?

Avg Rating

4.04

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

32%

4 STARS

42%

3 STARS

24%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Debra Castaneda

Author · 18 books

Debra Castaneda is an award-winning horror and dark fiction author based on the central coast of California. Her works include "The Devil’s Shallows," "The Root Witch", and "The Copper Man," which comprise the Dark Earth Rising series of standalone novels, and "The Monsters of Chavez Ravine," an International Latino Book Awards gold medal winner. Debra loves writing character-driven stories about people who experience scary things, and how they react when confronted with the unexpected. She’s committed to representing Latinas and Latinos in her books. For inspiration, she draws from her experience as a TV and radio journalist, and as a third-generation Mexican American. Over the years, she’s lived in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Portland, and the San Francisco Bay area. Debra now lives in Capitola, California with her husband. She enjoys rediscovering the Mexican dishes of her childhood and texting her two daughters about her latest binge-watch. ~Subscribe to her newsletter for the occasional giveaway and the latest news at www.debracastaneda.com; ~Stay in touch with her at: @castanedawrites on Facebook & @castanedawrites on Instagram .