Black Summer: Secrets Beneath the Drought

Te Rimu is the kind of rural New Zealand community where everyone knows everyone, where neighbours argue fiercely and still turn up when help is needed. Then the drought comes. Water runs low. Farms begin to fail. A controversial reservoir plan divides the district, and three words are painted across the local hall: **LET IT STAY BURIED.** Hours later, the shooting begins. Constable Ben Harris has spent most of his life in Te Rimu. He knows the roads, the farms and nearly every family in the district. But as familiar faces become victims and the violence spreads towards the local school, Ben realises the attacks are connected to something buried deep in Kauri Valley. Twenty-five years earlier, seventeen-year-old Daniel Kerr disappeared after a summer party. His body was never found. Now Daniel's younger brother has returned, old secrets are beginning to surface, and someone appears determined to make sure the truth stays hidden. As Te Rimu endures forty-eight hours of fear, grief and suspicion, Ben must unravel what really happened that night before more lives are destroyed. **Black Summer** is a tense, emotional New Zealand rural thriller about drought, loyalty, guilt and the terrible cost of keeping a secret too long.