“The book is brilliant. It reads like a memoir and grips like great fiction should – beautiful characterization”
Viga Boland – Author – No Tears For My Father
Talented pianist Megan Youngblood has it all – fame, fortune and Gideon.
But Gideon isn’t good enough for Megan’s ambitious, manipulative mother, whose meddling has devastating repercussions for Megan and for those close to her.
Now, trapped inside her own body, she is unable to communicate her needs or fears as she faces institutional neglect in an inadequate care home.
And she faces Annie. Sadistic Annie who has reason to hate her. Damaged Annie who shouldn’t work with vulnerable people.
Just how far will Annie go?
‘Someone Close To Home’ is a story of love, malice and deadly menace.
About the author
Alex Craigie
Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.
Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back. There were two princes in it – one was called Rupert and the other was changed to Sam because she couldn’t find enough rhymes for Randolph.
When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.
Trish has had seven books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. Three books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes, Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart, and The Bubble Reputation reflects her fears about social media and the damage it can do. Another book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller set in Pembrokeshire in Wales.
Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.
The Bubble Reputation won a Chill With a Book Premier Readers’ Award in 2023.
She is currently writing a series of books called The Rat in the Python about growing up as a Baby Boomer. The title comes from the term for the bulge in the population statistics caused by us post-war babies.
Review for Close to Home…
I always enjoy reading Trish’s stories, but I had no idea that I was in for such a gripping and riveting read!
I loved the way Trish melded the past with the present, throughout the story. This made it all the more tense.
As it happened, this story was quite apt, for I am confined to one room, for health reasons, and I am staring endlessly out of my window. This made a lot of what I read, all the more real.
I did worry that Megan’s life wouldn’t get any worse, and then it did. Most of which was unbelievably cruel and Trish showed us just how real it could get.
A thoroughly well written and believable story. The characters were so real, they all but jumped off the pages!
Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes 
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