Single-mother Fran returns to her sleepy hometown to care for her dying father when a devastating bush fire breaks out. A heartbreaking, nail-biting disaster-noir thriller from the bestselling author of The Cry and Worst Case Scenario. âUrgent, angry, absolutely terrifying, yet suffused with the humanity and humour you expect from a Helen Fitzgerald novelâ Erin Kelly âTantalisingly powerfulâ The Times âAsh Mountain is the author at her masterly best ⦠I loved it!â Louise Candlish ________________ Fran hates her hometown, and she thought sheâd escaped. But her father is ill, and needs care. Her relationship is over, and she hates her dead-end job in the city, anyway. She returns home to nurse her dying father, her distant teenage daughter in tow for the weekends. There, in the sleepy town of Ash Mountain, childhood memories prick at her fragile self-esteem, she falls in love for the first time, and her demanding dad tests her patience, all in the unbearable heat of an Australian summer. As past friendships and rivalries are renewed, and new ones forged, Franâs tumultuous home life is the least of her worries, when old crimes rear their heads and a devastating bushfire ravages the town and all of its inhabitants⦠Simultaneously a warm, darkly funny portrait of small-town life â and a woman and a land in crisis â and a shocking and truly distressing account of a catastrophic event that changes things forever, Ash Mountain is a heart-breaking slice of domestic noir, and a disturbing disaster thriller that you will never forget⦠________________ âA new novel from Helen Fitzgerald is always a major event, and Ash Mountain is magnificentâ Mark Billingham âThere is plenty of human depravity in the plot but none of that is as terrifyingly overmastering as the fireâ Literary Review âDomestic life is rarely served up quite so dark as this â but that only makes you hungry for moreâ The Sun âDark, atmospheric and terrifyingâ Ambrose Parry âCompellingâ Independent âA hugely entertaining writer, with lovingly constructed landscapes and so-real-you-can-actually-hear-it dialogue but the thing she does best of all is create a little warm and cosy microcosm of life, then throw in a bloody great firecracker of a detail that sends the whole thing off into a completely different directionâ Crime Fiction Lover Praise for Helen FitzGerald ***Worst Case Scenario was Shortlisted for the Theakstonâs Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2020*** âThe plotting is intricate and beautifully handled, and the narrative pace is absolutely breakneck ⦠a wonderful, energetic, hard-hitting and deeply funny novelâ The Big Issue âThe main character is one of the most extraordinary youâll meet between the pages of a bookâ Ian Rankin âA dark, comic masterpiece which manages to be both excruciatingly tense and laugh out loud funny at the same timeâ Mark Edwards âThe classic thriller gets a hell of a twistâ Heat âFitzGerald writes like a more focused Irvine Welsh or a less misogynist Philip Rothâ Daily Telegraph âDomestic life is rarely served up quite so dark as this â but that only makes you hungry for moreâ The Sun