Alice Isn’t Dead

Alice Isn’t Dead
Joseph Fink

From the creator of the wildly popular Welcome to Night Vale podcast comes a story about loving, about searching – and about the courage you need when you find the unexpected.For fans of Stephen King, Serial, Twin Peaks and of course the eponymous number one iTunes podcast itself.Keisha Lewis mourned the loss of her wife, Alice, who disappeared two years ago. There was a search, there was grief beyond what she thought was possible. There was a funeral.But then Keisha began to see her wife, again and again, in the background of news reports from all over America.Alice isn’t dead. And she is showing up at the scene of every tragedy in the country.Keisha shrugs off her old life and hits the road as a trucker – hoping on some level that travelling the length of the country will lead her to the person she loves.What she finds are buried crimes and monsters (both human and unimaginable), government conspiracies, haunted service stations and a darkness far older than the highway system it lies beneath.Inspired by the eponymous podcast, Alice Isn’t Dead is a story about loving, about searching – and about the courage you need when what you find is terrifyingly unexpected.Cast in the fluorescent lights of midnight diner-signs, this story is as big as the open road and as intimate as the darkness of a trucker’s cab: perfect for fans of Stephen King, Serial, Twin Peaks and American Gods.

Copyright (#u458d346a-06f3-581d-b24b-c85c54e08529)

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

Published by HarperVoyager

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Joseph Fink 2018

Jacket design by Rob Wilson © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Joseph Fink asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008323707

Ebook Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 9780008323721

Version: 2018-10-15

Dedication (#u458d346a-06f3-581d-b24b-c85c54e08529)

To Meg, who took this road trip with me. And to Jasika and Jon, who made it possible for me to share it.

This isn’t a story. It’s a road trip.

Contents

Cover (#u8b2038db-247a-549b-85ed-aea30068d528)

Title Page (#u00176f15-df45-5f5e-8a6f-0da750998bcb)

Copyright

Dedication

Part I: Thistle

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Part II: Bay and Creek

Chapter 21