The Vines

by Shelley Nolden

Overview

Award-Winner of the Cross Genre category and Award-Winning Finalist of the Mystery/Suspense, Historical Fiction, and General Fiction categories of the 2021 International Book Awards

In the shadows of New York City lies the abandoned, forbidden North Brother Island, where the remains of a shuttered hospital hide the haunting memories of century-old quarantines and human experiments. The ruins conceal the scarred and beautiful Cora, imprisoned there by contagions and the doctors who torment her. When Finn, a young urban explorer, arrives on the island and glimpses this enigmatic woman through the foliage, intrigue turns to obsession as he seeks to uncover her past--and his own family's dark secrets. By unraveling these mysteries, will he be able to save Cora? Or will she meet the same tragic ending as the thousands who've already perished on the island? The Vines intertwines North Brother Island's horrific and elusive history with a captivating tale of love, betrayal, survival, and loss.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940162570615
Publisher:	Freiling Publishing
Publication date:	03/23/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	379,527
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Born and raised in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area, Shelley Nolden headed east after matriculating from the University of Minnesota. After living in New York City for five years while working in finance, she and her husband decided they weren’t meant for city life and moved to Ridgewood, New Jersey.

In 2011, Shelley was diagnosed with acute promyelocytic leukemia. The first sign of her disease was losing her baby during the nineteenth week of pregnancy. She spent the first forty days of her illness inpatient, simultaneously mourning the loss of her baby while missing her eighteen-month-old. Because this type of leukemia prevents platelets from maturing into functioning clotting cells, her daughter wasn’t allowed to visit because even a hug could have proved fatal. Throughout her ordeal, she kept a cancer blog and regularly contributed to cancer-related publications.

Stemming from her personal experience, Shelley developed a deep-rooted drive to help others affected by cancer, subsequently becoming a Co-founder of GRYT Health, whose mission is to improve quality of life and increase survival for people facing cancer through a relentless focus on patient experience. Additionally, resulting from her experience as a college athlete (as a swimmer and then rower), as well as her years as a woman on Wall Street, she acted on her passion for the advancement of women’s rights by becoming an Advisor to Goal Five, a women’s sports apparel company named after the United Nations’ Fifth Sustainable Development Goal: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

THE VINES is Shelley's debut novel. Her obsession with forbidden North Brother Island in New York City’s East River, as well as her personal health history and passion for equality, heavily influenced the creation of this historical fiction thriller.

Currently, Shelley lives in the Milwaukee area with her family and their dog Storm, named after one of the most powerful and respected superheroes. Because, naturally, her commitment to female empowerment extends to the family dog.

Editorial Reviews

THE VINES weaves beautiful writing around an unsettling mystery: Who is the strange, scarred woman living on a seemingly uninhabitable island? Shelley Nolden's debut seems not just prescient - given the world's current focus on virology and immunizations - but also timeless, as it illustrates in painful detail how mankind seems destined to repeat our cruelest mistakes. Luckily for us readers, there's a bright thread of hope running through this book - as well as the promise of a sequel.

#1 New York Times bestselling co-author of You Are Not Alone - Sarah Pekkanen

Highly original and richly drawn, Shelley Nolden's THE VINES features one of the most fascinating central characters you'll ever meet. Drawing on both the dark history of North Brother Island
and today's painfully immediate worries about immunity and transmission of deadly disease, this debut transcends genre to combine history, thrills, obsession, medical ethics, and more into
the compelling story of three generations of doctors and one remarkable woman.

bestselling author of The Magicians Lie and The Arctic Fury - Greer Macallister

Eerily timely and profoundly compelling, THE VINES is an unputdownable, unforgettable saga, the journey of a seemingly helpless, persecuted American woman who survives and battles back, against all odds; this first in what promises to be an explosive series signals the arrival of Shelley Nolden's masterful new voice in hybrid fiction.

author of The Hunting Wives - May Cobb

In a debut that is part horror novel, part thought experiment, Nolden has accomplished the feat of getting readers to ask themselves what horrors can be done to serve the greater good.

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