Synopses & Reviews
"Original and imaginative . . . Ripping suspense, sheer terror, and a wrenching love story." Sandra Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Friction
The terrible truth about Manderley is that someone is always watching.
Manderley Resort is a gleaming, new twenty-story hotel on the California coast. It’s about to open its doors, and the world — at least those with the means to afford it — will be welcomed into a palace of opulence and unparalleled security. But someone is determined that Manderley will never open. The staff has no idea that their every move is being watched, and over the next twelve hours they will be killed off, one by one.
Writing in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King, and with a deep bow to Daphne du Maurier, author Gina Wohlsdorf pairs narrative ingenuity and razor-wire prose with quick twists, sharp turns, and gasp-inducing terror. Security is grand guignol storytelling at its very best.
A shocking thriller, a brilliant narrative puzzle, and a multifaceted love story unlike any other, Security marks the debut of a fearless and gifted writer.
Review
"This horror story with a humorous edge casts video surveillance as both hero and villain and raises plentiful goose bumps as a result." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"(A) stellar debut… As the Ducati-swift plot accelerates…it’s a testament to Wohlsdorf’s skill that she successfully negotiates the numerous tonal shifts between the unfolding Grand Guignol splatterfest and Tessa and Brian’s rekindling passion. Readers will gradually discover an even more emotionally affecting story as the action races to the moving climax." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Flawless...Security is perfectly tuned for blockbuster status....They don’t make a hotel big enough to house all the people who will want to read this, and soon, as in Manderley, all eyes will be on Wohlsdorf." Daniel Kraus, Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Grand Hotel meets Psycho in the age of surveillance...Security is cinematically vivid, crisply written, and sharp enough to cut...Wohlsdorf brilliantly subverts our expectations of the action genre in this smart, shocking, poignant thriller." Emily Croy Barker, author of The Thinking Woman’s Guide to Real Magic
Review
"Be surprised, be very surprised: Gina Wohlsdorf brings more than just plot twists and a terrifically tender love story to this thriller...It’s her playful homage to Hitchcock and du Maurier that had me reading, howling, and just plain loving this novel." Sara Gruen, author of At the Water’s Edge
About the Author
Gina Wohlsdorf was born and raised in Bismarck, North Dakota. An insomniac in childhood, she crouched over her pink desk in the wee hours and wrote illustrated storybooks that no one but she could follow. Her father, a high school English teacher, began bringing Gina the novels he was teaching and giving her quizzes on the material to demonstrate to his students that an eleven-year-old girl could ace the tests they were failing. Once she got to high school, she attempted to write a novel and discovered, to her embarrassment, that she was still the only person who could follow it. She triple majored at Tulane University. Following graduation, she lived in northern Florida, southern France, and Minnesota. She held a variety of jobs that afforded her time to write, including bookseller and massage therapist. She found, after two decades of trying, that her novels had begun to make sense. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. She currently lives in Colorado.