Red River Road by Anna Downes

Anna Downes's extraordinary next thriller follows a woman desperate to discover what happened to her sister on a solo road trip through the Australian outback. Katy Sweeney is determined to find her sister. A year earlier, just three weeks into a solo vanlife trip, free-spirited Phoebe vanished without a trace on Western Australia’s remote and achingly beautiful Coral Coast. With no witnesses, no leads, and no DNA evidence, the case has gone cold. But Katy refuses to give up. Using Phoebe’s social media accounts as a map, Katy starts to retrace her steps, searching for the clues that the police have missed. Was Phoebe being followed? Who had she met along the way, and what danger did they pose? Was she as happy as her sun-bleached, lens-flared photos seem to suggest? Then Katy’s path collides with that of Beth, a young woman on the run from her own dark past—and very recent present. And as Katy realizes that Beth might be her best and only chance of finding the truth, the two women form an uneasy alliance to venture forth into increasingly wild territory to find out what really happened to Phoebe in this breathtaking but maybe deadly place, and how her fate connects them all. Anna Downes takes us on a twist-filled journey into the dark side of solo female travel, in this gripping novel that explores what drives us to keep searching for those we have lost, the family bonds that can make or break us, and the deception of memory.