A Scare at Bedtime: The Eggtimer
For nine years, Catherine has lived by a single rule: three minutes. No more, no less.
Every morning, she boils her father's eggs with practiced precision, watching sand fall through the eggtimer while her hands shake. In the oppressive silence of their isolated house, perfection is survival. A stick leans against her father's chair, a constant reminder of consequences. Her mother's photograph sits on the mantle, a ghost from a past Catherine barely remembers and doesn't dare question.
Once a month, Catherine is allowed to visit the library, her only escape from the gray prison of her existence. There, she borrows the same travel book repeatedly, losing herself in photographs of distant shores and impossible freedoms. Greece. Morocco. Thailand. Places where people spread their arms wide and embrace the sun. Places she'll never see.
Until Thomas notices.
A new librarian with kind eyes, Thomas sees what everyone else has missed: a woman disappearing into silence. Through notes hidden in her beloved book, they build a paper romance, fragile, dangerous, and Catherine's first taste of hope since her mother's "accident." Thomas offers her the impossible, a plan to escape, a place to start over, a future beyond three-minute intervals.
But Catherine's father has been watching. Waiting. And he's killed before to keep his perfect household intact.
The Eggtimer
is a visceral exploration of domestic abuse, trauma, and the terrible price of freedom. It's a story about the violence we endure, the violence we commit to survive, and the haunting question, when you finally escape your prison, can you ever truly leave your jailer behind?
What Readers Are Saying
"Disturbing, compulsive, impossible to put down. The eggtimer will haunt me for years."
"A masterful psychological horror that understands trauma doesn't end when the abuse does."
"The most unsettling book I've read this year and I couldn't stop turning pages."