Co-authored with Madeline Sheehan.
THICKER THAN BLOOD
A true friendship never dies. Leisel and Evelyn lost everything. Husbands. Families. Friends. Lives that made sense. All they had left was each other, and a friendship that could withstand anything… Even an apocalypse. Until one fateful night, the marginal safety they’d come to rely on comes to a vicious and brutal end. With the help of Alex & Jami, both unlikely allies, Leisel and Evelyn are able to escape their shattered sanctuary only to find themselves face-to-face with a much altered, much crueler life where they have to find the way—and the will—to stay alive in a world they no longer recognize.
Traveling across a broken and infection-ridden country; the road-weary group are pitted against endless violence, improbable circumstances, and the ultimate loss. Everything comes at a price—especially safety, the cost of which could very well strip them of the one thing they’ve tried so hard to cling to: their humanity.Yet along with all the trials they’re forced to endure, there’s also hope in the form of love.
Having loved Leisel from afar, Alex attempts to put the pieces of her fractured heart back together.But in such a savage world, is there room for love? In a place of nightmares-made-reality, where the living should be feared far more than the dead, an unbreakable friendship and a love amongst all odds can mean the difference between life and death. There are friends…And then there are Leisel and Evelyn.
BENEATH BLOOD AND BONE
It is the end of the world.They call him Eagle, like the grand and beautiful bird that symbolizes freedom. During these dark times, when humanity is experiencing nothing but suffering, a man with such a powerful name should be a beacon of hope, yet he is anything but.
Her name is Autumn, but she hasn’t said this name or much of anything else in the four years since the fall of civilization. A shell of her former self, living wild in a cave at the bottom of a ravine, Autumn is accustomed to being alone. She prefers it, actually, especially when her only options for company either try to kill her, or worse, to lock her up inside their walls.Captured by Eagle’s people, Autumn is suddenly thrust back into the land of the living, but she would hardly call it living.
The community of Purgatory is full of sinners, the most evil of whom seem to have set their sights on her.In an act born of anger and defiance, Eagle becomes Autumn’s unexpected saviour, forcing these two solitary people into each other’s broken worlds.
Neither knows quite what to make of the other, but one thing is certain. To survive Purgatory, they must learn how to rely on each other, a feat that could possibly teach them both how to live again
THE BLOOD THAT BINDS
Two brothers. A childhood sweetheart. Life has never been easy for this trio, and especially not after the end of civilization as they knew it.
Having had their formative years ripped from them, they were thrust into a shattered, savage world, a world where they only had each other. Love and loss. Weary travellers on the brink, there is a storm brewing, a turbulent tempest that has nothing to do with the weather.
When tragedy strikes, everything changes in the blink of an eye– facades come undone, and loyalty is pushed to a breaking point. A diamond in the rough. Immersed back into something akin to normal society, a safe-haven in the midst of misery, our travellers are forced to finally confront their demons–long-kept secrets that have been haunting them for nearly a decade.
Love is never easy; and love during the end of the world is a hell of a lot more complicated.
Claire C Riley Books 