Synopsis

On a remote island off the coast of Tasmania, an Australian wilderness guide embarks on a four-day hike with six guests—and arrives at their destination with only two.

Devils Island is home to abundant wildlife and is the ideal place to re-introduce endangered Tasmanian devils. It’s also a region where travelers can see firsthand the unspoiled drama of Australia’s wild places. For naturalist guide Kerry, the trip offers a respite from the grueling work of trying to save an endangered species. American college classmates Brooke and Jane have a chance to reconnect after years of estrangement. Two Australian couples hope to escape their big-city lives and enjoy the company of longtime friends.

When Jane disappears on the first night, the group assumes she has wandered too far in the stormy weather. Yet it turns out she has a secret connection to one of the other guests—and when another hiker is found dead in camp, the group finds itself isolated by the worsening storm and wondering who among them might be responsible.

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Praise

“Devils Island is at once a riveting mystery and an eloquent plea to protect our natural world.” — A. J. Banner, #1 Kindle, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestselling author

“Devils Island isn’t just a compulsively readable mystery; it’s also a vital meditation on what it means to live through extinction in all its forms. I will not forget my visit to Devils Island anytime soon.” — Mindy Mejia, USA Today bestselling author of To Catch a Storm and Everything You Want Me to Be

“A terrific thriller. You never quite catch your breath as all of the secrets are revealed.” — Steve Berry, New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of The Atlas Maneuver  

Excerpt

Excerpted from One Planet Travel Guide

Destination: Tasmania, Australia

Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) can smell a dead body from half a mile away. Normally solitary creatures, they will gather to swarm it, greedily and ferociously, playing tug-of-war with the carcass, all the while emitting spine-tingling screeches and growls, sounds that terrorized the European settlers, who named the animals devils.

The size of a small dog, with black fur, reddish ears, and teeth that can crush bones, the Tasmanian devil is the world’s largest carnivorous marsupial, reaching up to twenty-six pounds. Devils are opportunistic nocturnal hunters, subsisting on a strong sense of smell and whatever prey (dead or alive) they find, even digging into the ground for the corpses of buried domestic animals, from dogs to horses. They can run up to sixteen miles per hour, and have been known to climb trees and forge rivers.

The devils can devour a large animal like a kangaroo within hours—muscle, organs, fat, bones, even fur—leaving nothing left. For their size, they have the most powerful bite of any living carnivore, with jaws that can open up to 80 degrees. They can eat nearly half of their body weight in thirty minutes.

Once existing in vast numbers across Australia, the devils are now found only in Tasmania, in danger of extinction due to a facial tumor disease that has spread across the island state, decreasing the devils’ population by up to 90 percent. In 2012 and 2013, a small group of healthy devils were released on Marbury Island, a few miles off the coast of Tasmania, though not without controversy. The devils have thrived on Marbury, almost dangerously so. They will fight for food and for mates. They have been known to steal the eggs of Cape Barren geese and other local birds, the belongings of the island’s human visitors, and anything resembling food. The island is known locally as Devils Island.

Chapter 1

Brooke

As spray from the wake begins to feel more like rain than a gentle mist, Brooke inches away from the bow until she is under the boat’s plastic canopy and standing shoulder to shoulder with Bryan, the blond-haired Australian guide. She looks over at Jane and sees her friend holding onto a metal post, swaying with the movement of the boat, her hand a few inches from that of one of

the Australian guests: Malcolm, Brooke remembers … There are eight of them crowded together on this tiny former fishing boat, skirting across the bay toward the island, forty minutes off the southern Tasmanian coast.

As Brooke watches the small marina at Triabunna disappear behind them, she can’t help wondering whether William has tried to get in touch. Though she’d moved out of their apartment a month ago, she texted him last week to let him know she was leaving the country. Why she did this, she isn’t sure; they hadn’t been in touch since she’d moved out. But perhaps it was a way of making it seem real. She still hasn’t told anyone they’re separated—not her parents, not her colleagues, not Jane. Maybe she’s feeling guilty about her abrupt departure from their marriage. It had been more sudden than even she had imagined.

She didn’t hear back from him, of course. Finally, just before takeoff in Seattle, she put her phone in airplane mode and forced herself not to check her email. She might as well get used to it, and not just because she’s been warned that cell service is close to nonexistent on the island. It’s over.

… Brooke has never taken a trip like this before—she hasn’t done much traveling at all, in fact, in the decade since college graduation, when the reality of real-world life set in: work, dating and then marriage, moving across the country for her husband’s job, taking a string of part-time jobs as she decided what to do with her new life.

Jane, on the other hand, was living the life they’d both dreamed of back in school. They’d been drama majors, and after graduating they moved together to New York, where they shared a narrow railroad flat in Queens, waiting tables and auditioning for small and infrequent parts in off-off-Broadway productions. Then, at the beginning of their third year in the city, Brooke took a full-time job in marketing at a tech company…while Jane kept auditioning and found a small measure of success: a leading role in an off-Broadway play, a few good reviews, a television commercial. By the end of that year, William got a new job and Brooke moved with him to Seattle, where they got married. That was the last time she saw Jane, at the wedding five years ago.

She and Jane hadn’t talked much after that, mostly because of what happened at the reception, and Brooke knew Jane moved to LA only thanks to Facebook, which eventually became their sole method of communication. In fact, that was how Jane extended the invitation to Tasmania, via Facebook message, with a link to the Marbury Island Track. Pack your bags, sweetheart, and book a flight to Hobart. I’m treating you to the trip of a lifetime. A luxurious, all-expenses-paid hike across one of the most beautiful islands in the world. And sorry, but Billy Boy is not invited.

Well, that wouldn’t be a problem.

About the Authors

Devils Island is the debut collaboration by the writing duo Midge Raymond and John Yunker.

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Midge Raymond is the author of the novels Floreana and My Last Continent and the award-winning short-story collection Forgetting English. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, American Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and other publications. She has taught writing at Boston University and at Boston’s Grub Street Writers; Seattle’s Richard Hugo House; San Diego Writers, Ink; and at writing conferences around the world. She earned a certificate in private investigation from the University of Washington.

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John Yunker writes plays, short stories, and novels. He is the author of the novel The Tourist Trail; editor of the Among Animals fiction series and a nonfiction anthology, Writing for Animals; and his plays have been produced or staged at such venues as the Oregon Contemporary Theatre, the Source Festival, the Centre Stage New Play Festival, and Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference. His teleplay Sanctuary was performed at the 2017 Compassion Arts Festival in New York, and his short stories have been published in Phoebe, Qu, Flyway, Antennae, and other journals.

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