Excerpt from Those Pink Mountain Nights by Jen Ferguson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Not that she would have called the cops. The RCMP claimed otherwise, but they weren't looking out for people like Berlin. For people like Kiki and Kiki's mom.

If Berlin's phone had worked, if she'd been able to borrow a charger from her least favorite coworker without suffering public humiliation, she kept telling herself that her best friend would have answered, even though they weren't talking, and she'd have faked a conversation long enough for the men to realize they hadn't found an easy target.

Instead, dignity intact, Berlin had outsmarted the drunks, slipped into a neighbor's fenced-in yard and waited, pressed against that sleeping house, nails clawing through mittens into her red phone case.

Her small inner voice said maybe the best thing to happen that night was that she hadn't called Quinta. Hadn't tested if they could fix what had unknowably gone wrong between them. Relief, in a way. But Berlin hated walking around, that sharp French Revolution guillotine hovering, waiting, ready to drop. It was primed.

And Quinta held the release trigger.

The purple Jeep long gone now, Berlin's maddening obsession returned. It was like if she could figure out its riddle, she'd figure out friendship too.

But maybe the painting lied. Maybe it wasn't something more. Maybe it was only a pipe after all. And if that was fact, Berlin worried what it meant for her and Quintana-Roo.

JESSIE

Long and wildly curly, Jessie's mop was a mega mess. With free period last, she should have gone to the big old family house and bathed herself. Maybe even resurrected the straightener from that middle school phase. Ha. When piglets grow their wings. Finger-combing her hair, yanking on knots, her leased Land Rover idling in the tiny parking lot that curved around Pink Mountain Pizza's corner storefront, Jessie laughed.

Her first shift. Her first job.

And it was a solid one. A real two-four-K-gold one. Something to be proud of. Not that her parents got it. Had even tried. Or ever would. To them, Jessie was a fairy child, snuck into their home after that first scary overnight hospital stay while their real daughter was eaten by the sharp-toothed fae. She was a broken fairy child at that. Nowhere near a perfect girl, in body thanks to one of the late effects of childhood cancer treatment, or in what her parents thought should be comportment. With cancer, the treatments could be as bad as the disease. You had to destroy good cells to smash the bad. After all that chemo, Jessie couldn't ever pass for a Disney Princess when their one job was to marry young and breed. It was why she preferred fairy tales—the gritty, gory ones where toes were chopped off, where Bluebeard's latest wife divorced his murdering behind and saved the day—to Disney in most things. But that didn't mean that Jessie couldn't enjoy a straight shot of high-fructose corn syrup on occasion too.

She contained multitudes. Even if her ovaries were like irradiated toast.

When her leg started to shake again, she knew Monday's family dinner wouldn't go gently into that good night of forgotten things. The quickest way to confirm what she suspected her father had done was to straight-shot ask Pink Mountain's owner, Joe. But she didn't see his big truck in the lot.

At mandatory family dinner, Jessie had dropped news of her job. That she had one, but not its specific whereabouts. With her parents, Jessie always behaved as if she were conducting the world's least interesting disinformation campaign.

Her father had pushed his armchair back a dramatic inch. The wood creaked. "Select a current Poseidon Group business if you feel the need to work outside the home. One of our in-town holdings." From across the table, like way across, as if they were the bloody Victorians, Jessie's mom added: "Oh, that sounds nice. Doesn't that sound nice, Jessica?"

Excerpted from Those Pink Mountain Nights by Niall Ferguson. Copyright © 2023 by Niall Ferguson. Excerpted by permission of Heartdrum. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.