The Extinction Club

In this gruesome, quirky tale of animal cruelty from Arthur Ellis Award–finalist Moore (Red-Rose Chain), Nile Nightingale flees New Jersey—where he’s facing trumped-up charges for allegedly kidnapping his own daughter—for rural Quebec, where he discovers a 14-year-old girl, Céleste Jonquères, tied up in a sack and cut so that she will bleed to death. In nursing her to health, Nile learns the motive of this terrible crime. Céleste, along with her recently deceased grandmother, battled against a network of poachers and even helped to send Alcide Bazinet, a terrible animal torturer, to prison. Despite his failures as a father, Nile takes it on himself to protect Céleste, a decision that leads him into conflict with the backwoods world of hunters, corrupt wildlife officers, and Bazinet loyalists out for revenge. Stock villains—including the sadistic Alcide—tend to cheapen the story, but the narrative is held together by the strange yet tender relationship that develops between Céleste and Nile. (May)