Thrillers & Suspense
![Erica Ferencik - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B002BOJGZ8.jpg)
Girl in Ice
From the author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle comes a harrowing new thriller set in the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, as a brilliant linguist struggling to understand the apparent suicide of her twin brother ventures hundreds of miles north to try to communicate with a young girl who has been thawed from the ice alive.
Valerie "Val" Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland's barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable-and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.
When Wyatt, Andy's fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility-a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands-Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North to meet this girl, and try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl's speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother's death.
The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val's connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt's research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val's brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey-led by the unlikeliest of guides-to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.
Valerie "Val" Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland's barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable-and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.
When Wyatt, Andy's fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility-a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands-Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North to meet this girl, and try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl's speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother's death.
The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val's connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt's research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val's brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey-led by the unlikeliest of guides-to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.
Editorial Reviews
"This dark, suspenseful, visceral thriller combines the pressing issue of our time-human destruction of the environment-with a gripping and beautifully written mystery set in the frigid far reaches of the Arctic Circle. Unflinching, devastating but ultimately hopeful, GIRL IN ICE grabbed me and didn't let me go until the very last page." -A. J. Banner, #1 Amazon, USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author
"This gorgeous, captivating thriller sets a dangerous, precious environment against an inner landscape of grief and longing. Moving, provocative, and breathlessly entertaining, this journey lingers long after the last page is turned." -Kassandra Montag, author of After the Flood
"With its jaw-dropping premise, unique locale, and great emotional depth, Ferencik's latest adventure thriller is riveting from the first page to the last." -Robyn Harding, bestselling author of The Perfect Family
"The story evokes a palpable sense of foreboding and becomes increasingly ominous as it highlights the power of nature-and of human emotion. Original, intense, powerful, disturbing, and utterly mesmerising, this one, which evokes Peter Høeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow, will stay with readers long after they've finished the book." -Booklist (starred review)
"Uniquely imagined in a spectacularly unforgettable setting that simultaneously filled me with wondrous awe and absolute terror. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough." -Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice and Remember
"Exemplary... Trenchant details about catastrophic climate change bolster a creative plot featuring authentic characters... Ferencik outdoes Michael Crichton in the convincing way she mixes emotion and science." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An excellent, thrilling mystery . . . With its fascinating science and compelling characters (one or more of whom may be a murderer), Girl in Ice demands to be read in one sitting." -BookPage (starred review)
"Whether I was desperate to solve a mystery, marveling at a beautifully described part of the northern scenery, or absorbing some fascinating tidbit of knowledge, this book held me rapt from start to end. Already one of my favorite books of next year, I'll be thinking about this one for a while." -Fiona Cook, Mystery and Suspense magazine
"Mysterious, anxiety-inducing and with a touch of magic, Girl in Ice is a wonderfully unique thriller that's literally bone chilling. Erica Ferencik has delivered a nerve-wracking thriller that will have you shivering on the edge of your seat." -Steve ...
"This gorgeous, captivating thriller sets a dangerous, precious environment against an inner landscape of grief and longing. Moving, provocative, and breathlessly entertaining, this journey lingers long after the last page is turned." -Kassandra Montag, author of After the Flood
"With its jaw-dropping premise, unique locale, and great emotional depth, Ferencik's latest adventure thriller is riveting from the first page to the last." -Robyn Harding, bestselling author of The Perfect Family
"The story evokes a palpable sense of foreboding and becomes increasingly ominous as it highlights the power of nature-and of human emotion. Original, intense, powerful, disturbing, and utterly mesmerising, this one, which evokes Peter Høeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow, will stay with readers long after they've finished the book." -Booklist (starred review)
"Uniquely imagined in a spectacularly unforgettable setting that simultaneously filled me with wondrous awe and absolute terror. I couldn't turn the pages fast enough." -Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice and Remember
"Exemplary... Trenchant details about catastrophic climate change bolster a creative plot featuring authentic characters... Ferencik outdoes Michael Crichton in the convincing way she mixes emotion and science." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"An excellent, thrilling mystery . . . With its fascinating science and compelling characters (one or more of whom may be a murderer), Girl in Ice demands to be read in one sitting." -BookPage (starred review)
"Whether I was desperate to solve a mystery, marveling at a beautifully described part of the northern scenery, or absorbing some fascinating tidbit of knowledge, this book held me rapt from start to end. Already one of my favorite books of next year, I'll be thinking about this one for a while." -Fiona Cook, Mystery and Suspense magazine
"Mysterious, anxiety-inducing and with a touch of magic, Girl in Ice is a wonderfully unique thriller that's literally bone chilling. Erica Ferencik has delivered a nerve-wracking thriller that will have you shivering on the edge of your seat." -Steve ...
Readers Top Reviews
J.K
A powerful read. I was riveted to this book until I finished. What possesses a woman to travel To a remote outpost in the Arctic? The place where her brother died. A place where a girl was frozen in ice and revived. Val is a language specialist. But can she decipher the land’s language as well as ice girl’s? And just what are they trying to tell her? A lot of heart pounding scenes to plow through in this book. It’s a different Type of read for me, but it was so good. However, I will not be traveling to a frozen outpost where there are sinister vibes for any reason or amount Of money.
Greta
I found this book to be absolutely astonishing. From the first page on, I was fascinated by not only the proposition — it’s got an incredible and extremely well executed premise — but the characters. How often do you get a thriller which has you gulping, heart racing, AND also presents characters that you believe in and care for? When I finish reading, I love to have been entertained but this story is honestly much more than pure entertainment. I thought about it long afterwards — I learned so much about the Arctic, linguistics, climate research but I was also deeply invested in the human stories. I was surprised to find myself genuinely moved. This is an author to watch. Don’t hesitate, you will be in for a wild ride that gets you thinking. A++
Denise CrawfordKindl
Atmospheric setting brings the Artic chill as this story unfolds. A linguist noted for her study of dead Nordic languages, Val Chesterfield, is invited to a remote island off the coast of Greenland to see if she can find a way to communicate with a young girl who apparently has been thawed after found frozen in ice. She decides to go, though she has severe fear anxiety, because her twin died there a year ago and Val wants to talk about him with his mentor and project leader, Wyatt Speeks. The weirdness begins as soon as she gets off the plane in this barren, unforgiving landscape. What I liked most about this book: the details and descriptions of the Arctic outpost and the way the author used it to set the tone and mood. The reader can almost actually feel the extreme cold and the minimalist conditions under which the team is meant to live. The close proximity of the characters to one another in the crowded spaces with nothing but endless snow and wind as the light diminishes each day. I also was very interested in the language aspect and the translation of the words as Val struggles to communicate with Sigrid. And, I was eager to discover the truth about the girl who had come to life after being frozen -- the how, especially. The writing style of the author was engaging and absorbing. What I didn't like -- the actual unfolding of the story was a disappointment especially the last third of the book when all falls apart and becomes predictable as far as outcome. The characters were such stereotypes and the plot basically seemed to turn into Helen Keller on ice. I found it difficult to relate to any of them, Val included, and some of what happened created difficulty for me to sustain my ability to buy into all that transpired. The underlying theme is focused on climate change and all that entails -- very scary to be sure. I found myself fascinated by the ice wind phenomenon described. I even googled it to see if it was a real thing (not as far as I could tell). Also, quite enthralled with the topic of thawing a frozen person or other living thing to bring them back to life and wish there had been more focus on that in the novel. In all, however, the book left me with more questions than answers because I do like science fiction when it can be made plausible with explanation. Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for this e-book ARC to read and review. I will be thinking about this one for awhile.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter One one
Seeing the name "Wyatt Speeks" in my inbox hit me like a physical blow. Everything rushed back: the devastating phone call, the disbelief, the image of my brother's frozen body in the Arctic wasteland.
I shut my laptop, pasted a weak smile on my face. There would be no bursting into tears at school. Grief was for after hours, for the nightly bottle of merlot, for my dark apartment, for waking on the couch at dawn, the blue light of the TV caressing my aching flesh.
No, at the moment my job was to focus on the fresh, eager face of my graduate student as she petitioned for a semester in Tibet, a project in a tiny village deep in the Himalayas accessible only via treacherous mountain passes on foot and maybe llama, all to decipher a newly discovered language. As I listened to her impassioned plea-trying to harness my racing heart-an old shame suffused me.
The truth was, I'd never embarked into the field anyplace more frightening than a local graveyard to suss out a bit of Old English carved into a crumbling stone marker. And even then I made sure to go in broad daylight, because dead people-even underground-frightened me too. Never had my curiosity about a place or a language and its people overridden my just say no reflex. Citing schedule conflicts, I'd declined a plum semester-long gig in the Andean mountains of Peru to study quipu, or "talking knots"-cotton strings of differing lengths tied to a cord carried from village to village by runners, each variation in the string signaling municipal facts: taxes paid or owed; births and deaths; notices of famine, drought, crop failure, plague, and so on. I'd even passed on the once-in-a-lifetime chance to deconstruct a language carved into the two-thousand-year-old Longyou caves in Quzhou, China.
Why?
Anxiety: the crippling kind. I'm tethered to the familiar, the safe, or what I perceive as safe. I function normally in only a handful of locations: my apartment, most places on campus-excluding the football stadium, too much open space-the grocery store, my father's nursing home. During my inaugural trip to the new, huge, and sparkly Whole Foods-chilled out on a double dose of meds-a bird flew overhead in the rafters. All I could think was, When is it going to swoop down and peck my eyes out? I never went back.
Ironically, I was the one with the power to give or withhold the stamp of approval for my students' research trips, as if I were any judge of risk and character. Watching the glistening eyes of the young woman before me, one of my favorite students, I stalled a few moments-tossing out a couple of insipid questions about her goals-an attempt to soak up her magic normalcy. No such luck. I signed off on her trip to Tibet wondering, How does she see me, really? I knew she was fond of me, but-that casual wave of her silver-braceleted hand as she turned to leave, that look in her eye! I swear I caught a glint of pity, of disdain. It was like she knew my secret. Her teacher was a fraud.
I'M A LINGUIST. I can get by in German and most Romance tongues, and I've got a soft spot for dead languages: Latin, Sanskrit, ancient Greek. But it's the extinct tongues-Old Norse and Old Danish-that enrapture me.
Languages reveal what it is to be human. This desire to make ourselves understood is primal. We make marks on paper, babble snippets of sound-then agree, by way of miracle-that these scribblings or syllables actually mean something, all so we can touch each other in some precise way. Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love, from the particular love of a new mother for her baby to one for unrequited romantic love, but it has twice as many for grief. My favorite is sokaparayana, which means "wholly given up to sorrow." A strange balm of a word, gentle coming off my tongue.
Though words came easily for me, I tended to miss the patterns that were staring me in the face. The fact that my ex genuinely wanted out didn't hit me until divorce papers were served. The fact of my father passing from just old to genuinely ill with lung cancer and not-here-for-much-longer didn't sink in until I was packing up the family home and found myself on my knees in tears, taken down by dolor repentino, a fit of sudden pain. The stark realization that my twin brother, Andy-the closest person in the world to me-had been pulling away for months came to me only after his death and at the very worst times: lecturing in an auditorium packed with students, conversing with the dean in the hallway. When it happened, these vic...
Seeing the name "Wyatt Speeks" in my inbox hit me like a physical blow. Everything rushed back: the devastating phone call, the disbelief, the image of my brother's frozen body in the Arctic wasteland.
I shut my laptop, pasted a weak smile on my face. There would be no bursting into tears at school. Grief was for after hours, for the nightly bottle of merlot, for my dark apartment, for waking on the couch at dawn, the blue light of the TV caressing my aching flesh.
No, at the moment my job was to focus on the fresh, eager face of my graduate student as she petitioned for a semester in Tibet, a project in a tiny village deep in the Himalayas accessible only via treacherous mountain passes on foot and maybe llama, all to decipher a newly discovered language. As I listened to her impassioned plea-trying to harness my racing heart-an old shame suffused me.
The truth was, I'd never embarked into the field anyplace more frightening than a local graveyard to suss out a bit of Old English carved into a crumbling stone marker. And even then I made sure to go in broad daylight, because dead people-even underground-frightened me too. Never had my curiosity about a place or a language and its people overridden my just say no reflex. Citing schedule conflicts, I'd declined a plum semester-long gig in the Andean mountains of Peru to study quipu, or "talking knots"-cotton strings of differing lengths tied to a cord carried from village to village by runners, each variation in the string signaling municipal facts: taxes paid or owed; births and deaths; notices of famine, drought, crop failure, plague, and so on. I'd even passed on the once-in-a-lifetime chance to deconstruct a language carved into the two-thousand-year-old Longyou caves in Quzhou, China.
Why?
Anxiety: the crippling kind. I'm tethered to the familiar, the safe, or what I perceive as safe. I function normally in only a handful of locations: my apartment, most places on campus-excluding the football stadium, too much open space-the grocery store, my father's nursing home. During my inaugural trip to the new, huge, and sparkly Whole Foods-chilled out on a double dose of meds-a bird flew overhead in the rafters. All I could think was, When is it going to swoop down and peck my eyes out? I never went back.
Ironically, I was the one with the power to give or withhold the stamp of approval for my students' research trips, as if I were any judge of risk and character. Watching the glistening eyes of the young woman before me, one of my favorite students, I stalled a few moments-tossing out a couple of insipid questions about her goals-an attempt to soak up her magic normalcy. No such luck. I signed off on her trip to Tibet wondering, How does she see me, really? I knew she was fond of me, but-that casual wave of her silver-braceleted hand as she turned to leave, that look in her eye! I swear I caught a glint of pity, of disdain. It was like she knew my secret. Her teacher was a fraud.
I'M A LINGUIST. I can get by in German and most Romance tongues, and I've got a soft spot for dead languages: Latin, Sanskrit, ancient Greek. But it's the extinct tongues-Old Norse and Old Danish-that enrapture me.
Languages reveal what it is to be human. This desire to make ourselves understood is primal. We make marks on paper, babble snippets of sound-then agree, by way of miracle-that these scribblings or syllables actually mean something, all so we can touch each other in some precise way. Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love, from the particular love of a new mother for her baby to one for unrequited romantic love, but it has twice as many for grief. My favorite is sokaparayana, which means "wholly given up to sorrow." A strange balm of a word, gentle coming off my tongue.
Though words came easily for me, I tended to miss the patterns that were staring me in the face. The fact that my ex genuinely wanted out didn't hit me until divorce papers were served. The fact of my father passing from just old to genuinely ill with lung cancer and not-here-for-much-longer didn't sink in until I was packing up the family home and found myself on my knees in tears, taken down by dolor repentino, a fit of sudden pain. The stark realization that my twin brother, Andy-the closest person in the world to me-had been pulling away for months came to me only after his death and at the very worst times: lecturing in an auditorium packed with students, conversing with the dean in the hallway. When it happened, these vic...
