Bloodlines run deep in close-mouthed Oniska, New York. As far as Sydney Lucero is concerned, her family's part in the town's history has ended. Back home to take care of a few final duties, she's determined not to stay long. Until her restless questions propel her into the bitter cold to check on her mother's beloved lake cabin. There, she finds a frozen corpse whose connections to the town--and to Sydney--will drive her into a murky web of secrets and suspicions reaching far back before she was born. When she pries the silver pendant from the dead man's fingers before calling the cops, she sets a torrent of violence, vengeance, and deception surging to the surface. "There's so much to love in Susan Bickford's newest novel, Dread of Winter- a profound sense of place, the visceral evocation of a bitter winter's cold, a dead-on depiction of the pit of despair that is the opioid epidemic, and language so beautiful on the page it'll give you goosebumps. I'm a newcomer to Bickford's work, but I'm putting her on my list of must-read authors.You should, too." -William Kent Krueger The remote town of Oriska, New York, hasn't been home for Sydney Lucerno for thirteen years. She's escaped the creeping addictions and long-simmering anger that are as much a part of the landscape as the bitter cold. But when she gets the call that her mother is dying, every secret and fear she left behind is waiting to welcome her back. Two days later, her mother's lover is dead too. And Sydney's sworn to protect a half-sister she never knew she had, a prickly teenager named Maude, with an opiate habit and a bad-news family. But more lies and feuds are poised to spring from every once-familiar corner. The predators Sydney thought she'd escaped are threatening both her and Maude. To get free, Sydney will have to discover the truth about what happened when she left-and decide what should stay buried, deep in the unforgiving snow . . . Praise forA Short Time to Die "By the end of the first chapter I was totally hooked." -Lisa Black "Gripping, chilling, and original . . . is sure to stay with you for a long, long time." - Eric Rickstad "Kept me reading late, late into the night, to an ending I never expected." -Taylor Stevens