Some wounds don’t
heal. They fester. They whisper. They take over.
In Dark Ugly Places, trauma isn’t something you
survive — it’s something that survives you.
Thirty-four-year-old Nicola Holiday loses everything in a
hit-and-run: her husband dead, her body broken, her fourteen-year-old daughter
Emmy forever changed. With no one held accountable, she spirals into grief,
panic attacks, and financial ruin — awakening a hereditary darkness she’s spent
her life trying to outrun.
That darkness has a voice now. Her name is Martha, and she
aches for revenge.
As Nicola’s grip on reality loosens, Martha slips into
another life — one of wealth, glamour, and moral rot. When she crosses paths
with the wife of a famous actor, Nicola’s suspicions ignite.
Pulled between vengeance and annihilation, Nicola and Martha
collide with a woman whose secrets may be the key to everything — or the thing
that destroys them both.
Dark, provocative, and deeply unsettling — a haunting
psychological portrait of female rage, obsession, and the terrifying lengths
the mind will go to survive unbearable pain.
Because sometimes the most dangerous place isn’t the past.
It’s inside your own head.
“A suspenseful and relentless tale of troubled
Californians.”
– Kirkus Reviews
“A tense, viciously readable psychological thriller about
the violence that lurks beneath polished surfaces.”
– BookLife Reviews
“With fast-paced thrills and gripping psychological drama,
Ashley Mansour’s Dark Ugly Places serves up vengeance for morally complex
characters.” - Indiereader
**Releases September 15 – PreOrder Now!**
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PROLOGUE
No one likes to be kept in the dark.
In the dark, everything is murky, even the Los Angeles sky.
But the day of Nicola’s accident, I had a pretty clear view of
things. It tends to be that way—clear—when Nicola isn’t.
Nicola, Ben, and their daughter, Emmy, were walking holding
hands, something the three of them hadn’t done since Emmy was a little kid. I
felt the itch in Nicola’s palm, like she didn’t want to hold hands. But Emmy
insisted. She was between them, arms outstretched, making that little humming
sound she sometimes made when she was nervous or lost in thought. Ben walked on
slightly ahead, his head down, eyes focused on the phone in his hand. I could
almost hear his teeth grinding.
Up ahead, the road was clear. The sun covered everything in
butter-yellow light. Crows perched in the bare-barked trees and made long,
scratchy cries like a group of smokers laughing. They rustled leaves and
crossed the pavement before them. But the trees were still, like the air had
been sucked out of the city. Up ahead, the road was clear.
The three of them approached the corner, Emmy and Nicola
chatting aimlessly. Ben narrowed his eyes and squinted at the screen as if the
sky was too bright. He stepped out into the road first. Emmy, next. She skipped
slightly—braids flying—and pulled her mom’s arm.
Nicola looked up and saw one of the crows overhead, its beak
open, making a dreadful sound. When she looked back at the road, her gut pinged
with a horrible dread she couldn’t place.
Then she—we—saw it.
From the middle distance, something large and hurtled into
view, its body glinting in the sun. Emmy screamed. Nicola tried to pull her
back, but one by one, her fingers slipped out of her grasp.
It was too late.
Nicola’s body collided with the big, thing, and in the
next moment, she was airborne, tumbling through the air as if she had been
taken by a tornado. Her thoughts spiraled with her, spinning out of control.
I’m going to die.
I’m going to live.
Don’t let me die.
I’m going to die.
She kept spiraling, around and around, until I stopped her with
a simple suggestion: Breathe, Nicola. Breathe. We have this power, those of us
who live in the darkness.
The asphalt grated her spine. It must have hurt, but Nicola did
not cry. Perhaps because the air was too full of Emmy’s screams.
She rolled to her left, her left arm pinned against her chest
like a piece of limp fabric. Her left leg lay stretched out before her
perfectly straight, but dead. Cold. Frozen in place. She rolled to her side and
saw Emmy, blood coating half of her face as though she were wearing a mask.
Five feet away, Ben lay in the road unmoving, his body contorted, his face
turned away.
Overhead, the stretch of blue sky angled down Beverly Boulevard
and went on forever. Cars passed, some honking, others slowing to stop and help
or to get a better look. Nicola grunted and heaved herself along the ground,
her jaw gritting with pain. She reached for Emmy, reached for Ben.
The body of the car stirred. A door opened. A black
polished shoe emerged onto the asphalt as the driver leaned out, then
disappeared again as the door shut. I heard the engine as the car started and
rolled backwards, slow at first, then picking up speed until it was gone.
Ashley Mansour writes dark, cinematic psychological suspense
and domestic suspense about dangerous relationships, buried truths, and the
chaos waiting beneath the surface of ordinary lives.
