Still Water - David Soto-Rios

Mara Calloway hasn't spoken to her family in twelve years - not since her thirteen-year-old brother Danny drowned at the Pinehurst Cabin and everyone agreed, very quietly, on a story. Now the whole family is gathering at the same lake for a long weekend in November, and the thing coiled in Mara's stomach since the moment she opened that envelope says this isn't about healing.

She's right.

By Friday night she can feel something watching from the tree line. By Saturday morning she finds boot prints in the frost and a cigarette butt still warm. When her father is found dead on the dock - a playing card placed on his chest like a signature - the cabin's doors are locked, the only car has a slashed tire, and the family realizes too late that the people in white clown masks who've been moving through the dark didn't just arrive this weekend.

They've been planning this for years.

Part literary siege, part slasher, part reckoning, Still Water is the story of a family that buried a secret and a group of people who came to dig it up - and of the one survivor in the room who might be fast enough, smart enough, and sober enough to make sure everyone gets out alive.

The masks are smiling.

They've been waiting a long time.