The Counting Game A Novel

Into the woods.
Count to ten.
Only one of us comes home again.

An atmospheric suspense set in 1995 rural Ireland in which the disappearance of a teenage girl and the silence of her younger brother unravels a community’s dark past—perfect for fans of Tana French and Liz Nugent.

Two children go into the forest. Only one comes out.

When thirteen-year-old Saoirse Kellough goes missing, panic grips a rural Irish community. Saoirse is not the first girl to disappear into the woods, and the only witness to the crime—her troubled younger brother Jack—refuses to speak. Saoirse went missing when they were playing The Counting Game, a ritual believed to ward off evil, and Jack has sworn to protect the forest’s secrets.

Freya, a psychotherapist with secrets of her own, is brought in to help investigators break his silence. As the race to find Saoirse alive accelerates, the search unearths hidden truths and memories long buried. Everyone is a suspect, and the closer Freya gets to uncovering what happened, the more danger she finds herself in.

A haunting and emotional mystery, The Counting Game is a suspenseful debut from an unmissable new voice in crime fiction.

Sinéad Nolan grew up playing in the forests and on the beaches of leafy County Dublin, Ireland. She was a regular freelance feature writer for the Sunday World and the Irish Independent and has had short stories shortlisted for the Momaya Press Awards and the Francis McManus Awards for RTE Radio. Apart from writing, she works in private practice as a BACP Registered Counsellor seeing clients in central London.