The Protege: A Novel

(Hardback)

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Description

Jody Gehrman pits the drive for revenge against the equally vital will to survive, in this chilling psychological suspense novel in the vein of Samantha Downing and Layne Fargo. Dr. Hannah Bryers, anthropology professor and forensics expert at the prestigious Mad River University, takes pleasure in examining corpses, but small talk and living people fill her with dread. When she's not teaching, she analyzes the decomposing flesh of murder victims around the globe. Winter Jones is Hannah's most promising graduate student. She's smart, cunning, and dedicated, but she's got her own agenda for coming to Mad River- to bring Hannah Bryers down. She'll stop at nothing to make her life implode. In alternating narratives, Winter systematically robs Hannah of the things she values most- her reputation, her job, and-ultimately-her safety. When dangerous mistakes are made in her lab, Hannah has no idea who would have it out for her and would be willing to risk students' lives. As the incidents become deadly, many suspects come to light. Hannah won't go down without a fight. She has to figure out who is sabotaging her career and killing people; her life depends on finding answers.

Reviews

Praise for The Protg:
A compulsive page turner.
Midwest Book Review

The Proteg, by Jody Gehrman, has everything: a brooding academic atmosphere, timely plot elements, and enigmatic characters, all within a well written tale. I highly recommend it!
Sylvie Perry, author of The Hawthorne School

The sheltered enclave of academia becomes a nightmare for Dr. Hannah Bryers as her favorite graduate student, Winter Jones, plots to shatter her career and her life. The Protg is a wicked ride through a twisty tunnel of revenge, betrayal, institutional politics, and deception. Jody Gehrman deftly manages her two equally compelling narrators. Hannah is socially awkward and fiercely intelligent; Winter is a master manipulator fighting to hold a deep-seated rage in check. Gerhmans novel is not a whodunit but a whydunitwe turn the pages to learn why Winter wants to destroy Hannah and to see how, and if, Hannah can survive. The writing is crisp, the plot engaging, and the characters, even the secondary ones, are well-drawn. As the personal stakes for both Hannah and Winter increase, each is pushed to the edge in a taut thriller that is a hell of a lot of fun to read. That is Jody Gehrmans biggest success, making a tale of one persons calculated destruction of another human being both horrifying and wickedly entertaining.
Christopher Swann, award winning author of A Fire in the Night

Praise for The Summer We Buried:
"Gripping . . . Gehrman keeps the suspense high . . . Psychological thriller fans will find much to like."
Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Girls Weekend:
A brooding meditation on how friendships buckle when we resent other peoples success.
The Washington Post

Gehrman does a good job delineating the womens individual characters.
Publishers Weekly

A Mean Girls reunion.
New York Journal of Books

I highly recommend this.
Seattle Book Review

[An]exhilarating, atmospheric thriller exploring the darker side of friendship."
Megan Collins, author of The Winter Sister

"From its irresistible first sentence to the final page, The Girls Weekend is a captivating who-done-it and a tour de force thriller . . .Simply unputdownable."
Paula Treick DeBoard, critically acclaimed author of Here We Lie and The Drowning Girls

Apulse-pounding thriller that asks the question: how well do you know your closest friends"
Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke, bestselling authors of The Two Lila Bennetts

"A heart-pounding thriller that will have you guessing until the very end! Gehrman's taut who-dunnit, The Girls Weekend, pulses with fear, suspicion, and the disturbing question of how well we really know each other. Not to be missed."
Elle Marr, author of The Missing Sister

Author Bio

Jody Gehrman has authored several novels and numerous plays for stage and screen. Her young-adult novel, Babe in Boyland, won the International Reading Association's Teen Choice Award and was optioned by the Disney Channel. Jody's plays have been produced or had staged readings in Ashland, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and L.A. Her full-length, Tribal Life in America, won the Ebell Playwrights Prize and received a staged reading at the historic Ebell Theater in Los Angeles. She and her partner David Wolf won the New Generation Playwrights Award for their one-act, Jake Savage, Jungle P.I. She holds a Masters Degree in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California and is a professor of Communications at Mendocino College in Northern California.