Into the Fading Twilight
(Hollow Ridge Book One)
She survived four hundred and seven days of captivity. She never imagined the danger would follow her home.
Nova Calloway has spent fourteen months rebuilding a life from nothing in the small mountain town of Hollow Ridge, Montana a place she stumbled into, bleeding and broken, on the worst night of her life. She’s found a fragile kind of peace here: cold morning swims in the lake, reckless cliff dives off the outcropping the locals call Widow’s Leap, and the particular, hard-won discipline of learning to trust her own instincts again. She’s not the woman she used to be. She’s something new sharper, warier, and determined never to be caged again.
Then her landlord sells the house out from under her, and a chance introduction lands her in the spare room of Kol Archer’s farmhouse a Forest Service investigator, single father, and widower still learning how to build a life after loss of his own. What starts as a practical arrangement quickly becomes something neither of them expected: a slow, careful trust growing between two people who understand, better than most, what it costs to keep going after everything falls apart.
But peace doesn’t last. An anonymous text arrives at 11:47 p.m. four words that shatter the fragile safety Nova has spent over a year rebuilding. I know you’re here. As the messages escalate and a name from her original nightmare resurfaces, Nova and Kol must confront the possibility that the man who once helped orchestrate her captivity was never working alone and that he’s found her again.
With a small-town sheriff’s department racing to close in, a threat closing the distance between watching and taking, and a growing love neither of them is willing to lose, Nova and Kol are forced to choose: run from the darkness circling them, or stand and fight for the life and the family they’ve only just begun to build.
Into the Fading Twilight is a slow-burn, single-dad, roommates-to-lovers romantic suspense novel about survival, trust, and the courage it takes to choose hope after unimaginable darkness. Fans of Catherine Cowles, Kristen Ashley, and Rebecca Zanetti will find everything they love here: a fiercely resilient heroine, a steady and protective hero, a found-family subplot with a scene-stealing little girl, and a small-town setting that feels like coming home. This book can be read as a standalone.
What readers can expect:
• A slow-burn romance between a trauma survivor learning to trust again and a grieving widower learning to hope again
• A gripping, well-paced suspense plot with real stakes and a satisfying resolution
• A found-family thread anchored by an unforgettable, scene-stealing child character
• Small-town Montana setting with vivid, grounded atmosphere
• Themes of survival, agency, and reclaiming a life after trauma handled with care, never gratuitously
• A fully earned happily-ever-after
Content notes: This book deals with themes of kidnapping, captivity, and stalking. While handled with sensitivity and without graphic detail, readers sensitive to these themes should be aware going in.