The Butcher and the Liar by S.L. Woeppel
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The Butcher and the Liar
Butcher tries to outrun father’s murderous past
BookLife Prize finalist pens haunting psychological thriller perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn
Truth cuts to the bone. At thirty-five, Daisy Bellon runs a butcher shop in a forgotten corner of Chicago, maintaining her father’s trade, but keeping his grisly legacy buried–until an anonymous letter slices the past wide open.
At nine, Daisy stumbled upon her father dismembering a woman in their basement, and became his reluctant accomplice. From that night on, his victim’s ghost has haunted her. Only her childhood friend Caleb–and the lies she spun to create the illusion of normalcy–kept her tethered to hope as she spiralled deeper into her father’s darkness.
But days after the letter upends her world, someone close to Daisy is brutally murdered in a chillingly familiar way. Forced to confront the truth about her family and herself, she must decide whether to finally expose the secrets she’s hidden–or become the monster she’s always feared.
To purchase your copy of The Butcher and the Liar, click the following link: Amazon.
Excerpt from The Butcher and the Liar
The woman’s hand sat on the table, separate from the rest of her. Next to the hand were other parts—who knew what. The smell settled in my nose. A smell I knew well, the smell that sometimes lingered in the basement for weeks, the same smell that sometimes escaped from the brick building next to the market—the place where the cows went before they came to our butcher shop. Chemicals and death. It was terrible, and I covered my nose to keep from gagging.
My eyes followed the path of parts along the table, my lungs in need of air. The woman was broken in pieces, the woman from the kitchen, the woman who never should have been here.
I swallowed and choked on my own dry throat. My father turned at the sound, and our eyes met. His weren’t those of a monster. They were familiar, the eyes of my father, confused and curious. He looked at me for so long, as though he only just remembered me, remembered who I was, and realized that I existed in this world as well as the one upstairs. He looked at me like he’d been gone for years, and his eyes were taking their fill of me now. Then I saw what felt like disappointment in his eyes.
When I finally looked away, I saw high heels at the bottom of the stairs. I saw more parts of the woman on a plastic sheet on the floor. I saw my father’s bloody apron and the jugs of foul chemicals next to the table.
“Go to sleep,” my father said to me, his voice almost comforting in a moment where nothing else was. “You shouldn’t be down here.”
I nodded and ran back up the stairs. I crawled into my bed, where I hid. But no matter how deeply I snuggled under the blanket or how tightly I pulled the pillow over my head, it wasn’t enough to forget.
The Butcher and the Liar Author S.L. Woeppel
S.L. WOEPPEL is a BookLife Prize finalist for her 2024 debut Flipping the Birdie.
Born and raised in Nebraska, Woeppel gets antsy living in one place too long. Currently residing in Minnesota, she has five great loves—her family, writing, reading, travel, and municipal bonds.
She’s watched the entirety of the television series ER three times and she has an embarrassingly large collection of those tacky souvenir spoons (like, more than two hundred). She can’t help it; she keeps buying them wherever she goes.
To learn more about S.L., click either of the following links: Website and Instagram.
Elena Hartwell/Elena Taylor
