We Bring You an Hour of Darkness

A CAPTIVATING SMALL-TOWN MYSTERY AND A BAND OF JOURNALISTS DETERMINED TO UNCOVER THE TRUTH.

The endangered lynx is at the center of an eco-terrorist plot gripping a small ski town, but newspaper publisher Tish Threadgill’s insider information about a local literary malcontent leaves her upstart newspaper in a unique position to crack the case.

＂We Bring You an Hour of Darkness is my favorite kind of thriller - one that combines urgent social themes with smart dialogue and a page-turning mystery.＂ --Lauren Nossett, author of The Resemblance and The Professor

It’s 1993, and the ski company that runs Franklin, Colorado, plans to build a massive new resort in a pristine wilderness home to an endangered wildcat. When eco-terrorists begin a series of attacks on infrastructure and property, the FBI sets up a national task force. While the local police and politicians are melting down, five intrepid reporters at the town’s struggling newspaper must step in to solve the crime. With her newspaper on the brink of collapse, editor Tish Threadgill is under pressure from a rival publication to sell. But a local literary malcontent turns out to have a ringside seat to the eco-terrorist plot. While trying to stave off the town’s power brokers who would very much like her pesky paper gone, Tish soon finds the mystery at the heart of the attacks are far too close to home.

Author Michael Bourne has been a contributor to the New York Times, The Economist, Tin House, and Literary Hub, among other publications and had his stories published widely in literary magazines. His debut novel Blithedale Canyon received rave reviews in Publishers Weekly, Zyzzyva, and Rain Taxi, which called it, ＂A clever blend of literary fiction with elements of crime and noir ... [whose] cinematic quality comes from characters that demand a performance.＂ For this novel, Bourne draws on his experience as a reporter at the Aspen Daily News, the pages of which were filled with a witch’s brew of charismatic wanderers, frontiersmen and women, and charlatans who populate mountain ski towns. He lives in Vancouver, Canada, with his wife and son.