THE GATES OF EVANGELINE (Charlie Cates #1)
When New York journalist and recently bereaved mother Charlotte “Charlie” Cates begins to experience vivid dreams about children— visions of injured children, dead children— she’s sure she’s lost her mind. Yet these are not the nightmares of a grieving parent, she soon realizes. They are messages and warnings that will help Charlie and the children she sees, if only she can make sense of them.
After a little boy in a boat appears in Charlie's dreams asking for her help, Charlie finds herself entangled in a thirty-year-old missing child case that has never ceased to haunt Louisiana's prestigious Deveau family. Armed with an invitation to Evangeline, the family’s sprawling estate, Charlie heads south, where new friendships and an unlikely romance bring healing. But as she uncovers long-buried secrets of love, money, betrayal and murder, the facts begin to implicate those she most wants to trust—and her visions reveal an evil closer than she could’ve imagined.
Selected PRAISE FOR THE GATES OF EVANGELINE
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015
A Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2015
Nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award
“In this spooky thriller, everyone’s a suspect, and the plot twists will keep you guessing.”
--People Magazine
“Powerful and captivating” —New Orleans Magazine
“A lyrical, haunting, heart-wrenching work of suspense with echoes of du Maurier, Hitchcock, and King.”
—Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
" Hair-raising and heart-rending, Hester Young's first novel is one of buried shame, children taken too soon, and, ultimately, of immense true love that binds across the mortal divide."
—Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, New York Times best-selling author of Bittersweet
"…sure to haunt readers' dreams long after they've turned the last page."
--Shelf Awareness, Maximum Shelf feature title
THE SHIMMERING ROAD (Charlie Cates #2)
As she nervously awaits the birth of her daughter, journalist Charlie Cates has no desire to stir up the past. Yet when her estranged mother is found murdered in Arizona with a sister Charlie never knew she had, Charlie must confront her own painful family history…and face the child left behind. A child who speaks to Charlie in her dreams. A child who was present on the night of the killings. A child with no one else to turn to.
Led by her supernatural ability to connect to both the future and the past, Charlie travels to Tucson and unearths new clues about the unsolved double homicide. The search for answers will take her on a spine-tingling journey that places her life and that of her unborn child in terrible danger. In the end, Charlie must grapple with the most frightening question of all: Does seeing the future give you any power to change it?
THE BURNING ISLAND (Charlie Cates #3)
Journalist Charlie Cates has always believed in facts, in what can be proved--her career depends on it. Which is why she has never truly accepted the supernatural visions that guide her to children in danger. After her work on a high-profile missing-child case brings unwanted fame, she reluctantly flees to the lush Big Island of Hawaii with her best friend, Rae. Determined to avoid her disturbing visions, Charlie begins writing what seems to be a harmless interview of a prominent volcanologist, Victor Nakagawa. But her hopes for a peaceful vacation are soon dashed by haunting dreams of a local girl who went missing six weeks earlier.
In the small and sleepy town of Kalo Valley, Charlie and Rae come to realize that even paradise has its ugly secrets, and the Nakagawa family is no exception. In order to find the missing teenager and stop a dangerous predator from striking again, Charlie is forced to embrace the gift she has always tried to conceal. Meanwhile, someone is watching her every move, and the closer Charlie gets to the truth, the more distant her chances of ever leaving the island alive.