"A masterful exhibition in storytelling; a breathless page-turner. Ligon drives his narrative like a formula one racer. Buckle your seat belts and get ready for a thrilling ride."—Jonathan Evison, West of Here

"Part meditation on modern love's dark and often unexamined underbelly; part can't-put-it-down-even-for-a-dinner-break-thriller, this novel contains one of the most convincingly and complicatedly terrifying fictional characters I have run into."—Pam Houston, Contents May Have Shifted

"A wildly original love story, a ghost story, a tense and suspenseful story in which the wickedly talented Ligon channels voices—of the lost, the longing, and the damned."—Jess Walter, We Live in Water

Praise for Safe in Heaven Dead:

"A superbly convincing first novel....An expertly motivated debut."—Kirkus, starred review

"This debut novel instantly seizes and holds the imagination."—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Ligon is firmly in control, laying out the elements of the story like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle."—New York Times Book Review

Nikki has spent her life running from her abusive mother and the violent boyfriend she killed years ago, and now from his brother, Burke, just released from prison. Burke doesn't know yet how his brother died, but he's obsessed with finding Nikki and claiming her—and her daughter—as his own. Now she's run out of room to run.

Samuel Ligon is the author of Safe in Heaven Dead (HarperCollins, 2003) and Drift and Swerve. His stories have appeared in more than twenty literary journals. He teaches at Eastern Washington University's Inland Northwest Center for Writers, and is the editor of Willow Springs.