The New York Times bestselling author of Dark & Shallow Lies is BACK with another chilling supernatural thriller filled with murder, romance, and a decades long mystery that haunts a small Florida town. One Last Breath by Ginny Myers Sain hits shelves March 5, 2024!

Mount Orange, Florida, is famous for two things. 

• Cerulean freshwater springs, perfect for free divers who aren’t  afraid of lurking gators.
• The gruesome cold case murder of best friends, Bailey and Celeste, twenty years ago.

The spectre of Bailey and Celeste’s murders cast a permanent darkness over sunny Mount Orange. Tru has always lived in that shadow. Sometimes, it seems like she knows the long-dead Bailey, feels the dead girl in her bones. Now she’s supposed to head to FSU in the fall with her boyfriend, but those unsolved murders — and the death of her own sister — invade her every thought. It’s only in the shadowy deep, 100 feet below the surface of Hidden Glen Springs, that she can breathe. 

When a strange girl named Rio rolls into town, hell-bent on figuring out who killed Bailey and Celeste, Tru can’t resist entangling herself in the thrill of solving the decades old mystery any more than she can resist her familiar, aching attraction to Rio.

As the summer heat ignites, so does the spark between Tru and Rio…along with their other-worldy connection to Bailey and Celeste. But when someone begins stalking them, the girls become convinced the killer is back in town. And if they keep digging into the past, Tru and Rio know this time, it could be their blood that makes the springs run red.

Scroll down to see the cover and read a sneak peek, and remember to preorder your copy!

Cover Design: Kristie Radwilowicz

USUALLY, IT’S THE soft sound of the knife that wakes me. The noise it makes when it slices through the canvas. Like a whisper. I roll over to ask Celeste what it was that she said, but she can’t answer because she’s already dead. Staring and bloody.

So I run.

Other times when I imagine myself as Bailey, it’s the crunch of leaves or the snap of a twig that makes me sit up straight in my sleeping bag.

I stare into the dark, not realizing that the rest of my life can be measured in minutes.

Even in my dreams, though, that night always ends the same way. With me dead. Floating on the surface of the spring. I fade into the blackness, my hair spreading out around me in a sea of blood, without ever knowing that Celeste and I have become the most famous citizens of Mount Orange, Florida.

But then I wake up. Take a deep breath. Hear the hum of the air conditioner. I count the old glow- in- the-dark stars on my ceiling and feel the softness of clean sheets against my skin. I inhale the mountain breeze dryer sheets my mother uses, even though neither of us have ever even seen a mountain in real life. Every time, I’m hit with this rush of relief. Because I’m not Bailey.

I’m not Celeste, either.

I’m Trulee.

And instead of bleeding out in the water, right now I’m standing on the courthouse lawn while the high school choir sings a memorial song for two long‑buried girls who have always felt more alive to me than any of the people standing here dripping in the  late‑May heat.

I squint and glance up toward the sky. All that smooth, endless blue reminds me of the surface of the freshwater springs that lie right outside the city limits. It’s the perfect day to be free diving out at Hidden Glen, but I felt like I had to be here. So did everyone else, I guess.

Downtown Mount Orange is a three‑block strip of insurance offices, real estate offices, and four or five junk stores that like to be called “antique shops.” Other than the memorials to Bailey and Celeste scattered around town, and the old crime scene out at Hidden Glen Springs where they died, the only real things of interest are an old‑fashioned ice cream parlor called The Cone Zone and a beauty salon called Kurl Up and Dye. Every business sports a dark green awning out front, and big planters of ferns and pink hibiscus line the sidewalks. It would be picturesque, probably, if you didn’t live here.

But I do.

I wipe at my sweaty forehead and glance up at the Florida flag flying over the courthouse.

My home state is known for four things.

Alligators.

Beaches.

Theme parks.

And serial killers.

There’s Ted Bundy. Danny Rolling. Aileen Wuornos. The legendary Glades Reaper. He’s maybe the worst of the worst. The things he did were so unspeakable that the mention of that name is enough to stop a conversation in its tracks. The original Florida boogeyman.

But I’m not thinking about him as I stand in the baking afternoon sun, struggling to fill my lungs with thick, wet air that feels more like warm oatmeal than anything else.

On a little stage at the front of the crowd, our illustrious mayor, Knox, is rambling on about the new memorial fountain in the town square. I’m not thinking about him, either, though.

I’m thinking about Bailey and Celeste again, our own local horror story.

The anniversary of the murders out at Hidden Glen is coming up in just a few weeks. It happened almost twenty years ago, but it’s clear that nobody has forgotten about what went down out there that night, because everyone has gathered here in the hellish heat to see yet another memorial dedicated to our dead girls.