Chapters Through Life: McAllister Series Tour and Giveaway!

Where the Bodies Are

The McAllister Series Book 1

by L.V. Gaudet

Genre: Psychological Crime Thriller

Step into the twisted mind of a serial killer in this disturbing psychological thriller.

Dead bodies are being left where they are sure to be found. But, the killer made a mistake; one victim left for dead survived.

Kept in a medically induced coma while she recovers, they can only watch her and wait for the killer to come back for her.

While Detective Michael Underwood protects their only living witness, Detective Jim McNelly and his reporter friend Lawrence Hawkworth are determined to find the killer and bring his killing spree to an end. Instead, they discover a bigger mystery.

The killer's reality blurs between past and present with a compulsion driven by a dark secret locked in a fractured mind. Overcome by a blind rage that leaves him wallowing in remorse with the bodies of victim after victim, he is desperate to stop killing.

After learning of his victim’s survival, the killer sees it as a sign they are meant to be together. Threatening her tenuous grip on life, he is determined to take back his prize while he continues kidnapping and murdering young women.

Accustomed to a life of abuse, one victim’s experience becomes her refuge in a desperate bid for survival.

Instead of killing her, he keeps Katherine Kingslow imprisoned in the dark while he continues plotting to take back the Jane Doe in the hospital. How long can Kathy survive and will she lose her own mind?

The search for the killer will lead to his dark secret buried in the past, something much larger than a man compelled to kill again and again.

Add to Goodreads

Amazon * Kobo * Smashwords

Whispers. Far away and insidious. Darkness.

To sleep more deeply is to dream more deeply.

In the darkness, where the nightmares live.

Whispers. Far away and insidious. Darkness. Escape. Trapped. Helplessness. Weak. Cold wet. Dog. Nothing. Fear welling up, bubbling up in a scream yearning to tear free from a dry scorched throat, and silenced with the silent slipping of a needle into the injection port of a thin intravenous plastic tube.

Bruising and swelling leave her barely recognizable as human in the monstrosity of the ruination inflicted on her. Days meld into weeks and still she sleeps.

The McAllister Farm

The McAllister Series Book 2

Step back in time to learn the secret behind the bodies in Where the Bodies Are in this disturbing look at the boy who will grow up to create the killer.

1981

Meet David McAllister, the boy who will grow up to create the killer.

In 1981 there was a man who lived on a farm. William McAllister was a private and reclusive man who, above all else, did not like to have attention drawn on his family.

He wanted only to be left to mind his own business and family and for the world to do the same. But that very reclusiveness fosters contempt and suspicion in the people of the small farming community his family has called home for generations.

William McAllister has a son, Jason McAllister. Jason is a troubled boy. Growing up under his father’s strict rules and isolated from the normal childhood relationships, he is left to explore his darker inclinations. Seeing the darker side of Jason, William tries to rein his son in by bringing him into the family business.

Just then a serial killer starts preying on local young women. The McAllisters quickly find themselves drawn into the spotlight when the town decides William McAllister is the killer. As the town’s search for the killer focuses on the McAllister farm and the woods behind it, the threat to the McAllister secret grows.

The McAllister family history is as dark as the secret hiding in the woods. The attention is a threat to both William McAllister's profession and his family. He has no choice but to find the killer himself. He might not like what he learns.

Add to Goodreads

Amazon * Kobo * Smashwords

Is there something wrong with me?

Why does it feel so good

to see something squirm in pain?

To see the fear and begging in their eyes?

To be the only one who can help them

if I only just stop,

but to go ahead anyway?

The shovel makes a sly shuh-king noise as its blade bites into the hard earth that likely has never been touched by the tools of men.

William McAllister struggles against the un-giving ground, putting his foot on the top edge of the shovel blade beside the handle protruding from it and using his weight and muscles to force the blade deeper.

He grunts with the effort.

The night creatures watch silently from the safety of their hideaways in the woods.

His breath turns to fog in the cool night air, coming heavier from the exertion.

Satisfied he has pierced the ground deep enough; he works the shovel back and forth before leaning on it, scraping out a pile of hard dirt. He dumps it next to where he is digging and thrusts the blade into the earth again.

It is spring and still chilly at night. The ground is still thawing from its winter freeze, making the job harder.

The trees stand sentry above, dark figures against the moonlit sky blocking out some of the stars. The lower brush surrounding him grows where the trees thin to let more light reach lower, allowing it to thrive and grow taller and thicker, giving the spot a more secluded feeling.

The wind picks up, hissing through the leaves of the treetops.

He ignores the whispering trees, continuing to dig until the hole is big and deep enough.

At last he pauses, wiping away the sweat dripping into his eyes from his forehead.

He drops the shovel on the ground and picks up a sheet-wrapped object lying on the ground behind him. It is perhaps the size of a small child of about four or five years old.

The sheet looks ghostly pale in the darkness, seeming to hover on its own in the barely visible arms of the dark-clothed man against the background of the dark woods surrounding him.

Kneeling, William gently lays it in the hole.

He picks up the shovel, standing over the hole staring down into it for a pause that lasts only a few heartbeats but feels longer.

Without a word, he starts shovelling the pile of disturbed earth back into the hole. With each thud of dirt hitting the sheet-wrapped object its startling brightness against the dark of the dirt and night grows smaller. He keeps at it, methodically tossing in shovel full after shovel full until the

displaced dirt has all been replaced and the wrapped object completely buried. The rounded mound of dirt is dark against the rotting leaves and brown pine needles covering the ground all around.

With a powerful swing, he brings the flat bottom of the shovel blade down on the mound. It hits with a dull thud, leaving an indentation in the disturbed earth. He pounds it again and again, compacting the loose chunks of dirt, but it isn’t enough. He wants the mound to be level with the ground around it.

Scattering leaves, twigs, and fallen pine needles over it, he starts stomping the mound with his boots, stomping and stomping, clouds of vapour puffing out of his mouth in the chill air with the effort. He scrapes the surface with the sharp shovel blade, smoothing it.

Scattering more debris on the spot, he presses it in with the flat of the shovel and then sets the shovel down to scatter more loose debris on top.

Finished, he studies his handiwork and nods, satisfied.

There is no visible sign the ground has ever been disturbed unless you know to look. The next good rain will wash away even those faint traces.

Picking up the shovel, William moves off through the woods, eventually arriving at a farmyard.

In one direction across the farmyard is an old barn that has not been used to house animals for decades. Straw still litters the floor in places around the edges and in old stalls. The rest is swept clean. The moonlight coming in through the cracks between boards and in the windows glints dully off the rounded metal frames of old tractors huddled in the darkened interior. Like the farm itself, the tractors were passed down to him from his father.

The old barn is feeling its age and will probably need to be rebuilt in another ten years.

Close to him near the edge of the trees is a shed used for storage for anything small enough to pile on its shelves and in corners.

Centered between them across the yard is a small old farmhouse.

It is the kind of farmhouse built before building codes, when a handshake was enough to suffice and a farmer built his own house with a hammer and nails and his own sweat. The house is small but well built with two small bedrooms and a mud-floored cellar for cold storage and the only access to the cellar a trap door with a ladder that goes straight down. The walls are made of flat boards grouted between them to seal the cracks.

The house was built by an earlier generation of McAllisters when they first settled here and the farm handed down in the family.

The livestock on the farm consists of a small flock of free roaming chickens that provide them with fresh eggs, a single aging nanny goat they use for milk, and a small herd of feral cattle that live mostly unbothered in the field. An old barn without doors beyond the trees surrounding the farmyard provides the cattle shelter when they need it.

William walks across the yard and puts the shovel in the barn, hanging it on the wall, then heads for the farmhouse.

The light shining on a pole in the farmyard reveals the lines at the corners of his eyes; lines drawn by hours spent working outside under the burning sun and against the ravages of the wind and weather. He looks forty, although he is younger.

Marjory greets him at the door, wringing her hands and looking anxious.

“Did you take care of them?” Marjory asks.

He nods. “They won’t be found where I buried them.”

“Good,” she says. “Now we have to break it to them.” Marjory is upset and wishes they did not have to do this.

Today had been as any other until the racoon came.

Hunting Michael Underwood

The McAllister Series Book 3

Step deeper into the twisted mind of a serial killer as he slips further into madness in this disturbing psychological thriller.

Hunting Michael Underwood follows on the heels of book one, Where the Bodies Are, bringing the first two stories and their characters together as the search for the killer continues.

Michael Underwood has vanished and everyone is searching for him. Detective Jim McNelly is determined to not stop until he finds him. Working with the detective, Lawrence Hawkworth is still chasing the bigger story he knows is behind the bodies. Jason McAllister knows he must stop the killer he created before he goes too far. He may be the only one who can stop him.

Unable to let go of his barely remembered past and the search for his sister, the killer goes looking for Jason McAllister’s past and his family.

*****

Detective Jim McNelly is furious. Detective Michael Underwood disappeared without a trace with the only living witness to the McAllister murders. Worse, Michael is not who he pretended to be. And then the other shoe fell.

Jason T. McAllister, tried and convicted of the kidnapping and murders of multiple women and the prime suspect behind the bodies discovered in the woods behind the McAllister farm, is being inexplicably set free. He will not spend the rest of his life in prison.

Jim is determined to find Michael Underwood, bring him down, and discover the truth about who he really is and what his connection to Jason McAllister is.

Working with his long time friend, the notoriously unscrupulous investigative reporter Lawrence Hawkworth, Jim will not stop until he finds Michael and the answers to the bodies found in the mass graveyard in the woods behind the McAllister Farm.

Jason McAllister knows he must stop the real killer behind the murders he was convicted for. As the killer spirals further into madness, Jason is the only one who can stop him. But, he needs help. He is going to have to talk to his father, William McAllister, the man who taught him how to hide the bodies.

Michael Underwood and Katherine Kingslow are on the run. A victim of domestic abuse and only known survivor of the McAllister Farm killer, Kathy has lapsed into Stockholm syndrome. Now she is torn between her need to be with her captor and fear of his escalating psychotic episodes.

Everyone is hunting for Michael Underwood.

Add to Goodreads

Amazon * Kobo * Smashwords

Killing David McAllister

The McAllister Series Book 4

Everyone wants to kill David McAllister in this explosive conclusion.

David McAllister must die.

Crazy comes to a head in this disturbing psychological thriller.

When an unbalanced serial killer sets his sights on a little girl, there is only one way it can end. Someone will die.

Sometimes the only way to stop a monster is to kill it. He has gone by many names, but he was raised as David McAllister, and finding what he is looking for is not enough to quiet the darkness inside him.

The organization ordered the cleanup of the entire McAllister family.

The job was given to Sophie McAllister.

While Detective Jim McNelly and his reporter friend Lawrence Hawkworth continue to hunt them down, the McAllisters move into hiding.

David McAllster’s psychosis continues, but now Sophie’s daughter is in danger. He believes she is his tiny sister Cassie.

The presence of his now adult sister Cassie does not stop his dead little Cassie from tormenting him.

***

David McAllister must die.

While the McAllisters move into hiding, Detective Jim McNelly and his reporter friend, Lawrence Hawkworth, continue to pursue them. Jim and Lawrence split up to follow their own leads, routes that will take them each on their own path to discover secrets behind the McAllisters.

Anderson and Wil detective hunting them while trying to resolve the issue of what to do with David, Kathy, Rose Bheals, and the boy Jason brought, Billy.

Kathy is becoming increasingly fearful both for and of David and wants out, but feels trapped. She is certain death is the only way out.

Cassie swore to kill David for what he did to Connie and the others. Torn by memories she does not have and the knowledge of the dark hole this life will bury her in, she needs to escape.

Sophie has been ordered to kill David and Kathy. She may have to kill her own brother, Jason, too. When the time comes, she’s not sure if she can do it.

With Marjory’s lapses into the foggy confusion of Alzheimer’s, nobody believes her when she really needs them to, when Sophie’s little girl’s life is at stake.

David is slipping further into madness and, convinced she is the little sister he lost so many years ago, he is going to take little Lauren with him. Having his now adult real sister, Cassie, there is no help.

Will someone reach David and Lauren in time as the blackness closes in and rage takes over?

Add to Goodreads

Amazon * Kobo * Smashwords

L. V. Gaudet is a subjugated cubicle dweller by day and a Canadian author of dark fiction by night, a member of the Manitoba Writers’ Guild, the Horror Writers Association, and Authors of Manitoba.

L. V. grew up with a love of the darker side; sneaking down to the basement at night to watch the old horror B movies, Vincent Price being a favourite, devouring horror books, and has had a passion for books and the idea of creating stories and worlds a person can get lost in since reading that first novel.

This love of storytelling has L. V. working writing and editing into a busy life that includes a full time job, family, and doing the little things to help the writing community including offering encouragement to others in the online writing community and volunteering time editing the Manitoba Writers’ Guild newsletter and helping with their Facebook presence, proofreading for the HWA newsletter, and visiting schools for I Love to Read month.

L.V. Gaudet currently lives in Winnipeg with two rescue dogs, spouse, and kids.

L.V. Gaudet’s books are available in ebook and print format at online bookstores.