When Martha Covington moves to Amberleen, Georgia, after her release from a psychiatric ward, she thinks her breakdown is behind her. A small town with a rich history, Amberleen feels like a fresh start. Taking a summer internship with the local historical society, Martha is tasked with gathering the stories of the Geechee residents of nearby Shell Heap Island, the descendants of slaves who have lived by their own traditions for the last three hundred years.
As Martha delves into her work, the voices she thought she left behind start whispering again, and she begins to doubt her recovery. When a grisly murder occurs, Martha finds herself at the center of a perfect storm—and she’s the perfect suspect. Without a soul to vouch for her innocence or her sanity, Martha disappears into the wilderness, battling the pull of madness and struggling to piece together a supernatural puzzle of age-old resentments, broken promises, and cold-blooded murder. She finds an unexpected ally in a handsome young man fighting his own battles. With his help, Martha journeys through a terrifying labyrinth—to find the truth and clear her name, if she can survive to tell the tale.
"A juicy, twisty literary thriller so captivating you might want to take the long way to your destination... Hillary Huber['s] mastery of accents from the melodious Geechee dialect to the broad vowel drawl of Southern aristocracy is on point and music to this Southerner's ears."
~ The Atlanta Journal Constitution
"One of the best books I’ve read [this year] . . . The Girl in the Maze is a genre-crushing story that’s part mystery, part thriller, with elements of horror. The result is a terribly entertaining novel."
~ Cemetery Dance
"Enthralling . . . a psycho-thriller of dark secrets in a small historic Georgian coastal town."
~ Judith D. Collins, Must Read Books
Prologue
She wants to kill you.
Martha’s fingers tightened onto the Pentel No. 2 pencil, clutched in her lap like a secret talisman. Dr. Ellijay picked up the stack of test booklets, squared them on her desk with soft raps, and began handing them out. She walked slowly down the aisle, her heels popping on the linoleum.
Not today, Martha thought. Please, Lenny, not today.
Outside the casement windows, the campus was awash in gray, a silent movie, as it had been for days, suspended between fog and drizzle, the dull light suppressing shadows, flattening the neo-Gothic buildings of Ponce de Leon College like a plywood set. Only two o’clock, but outside looked more like dusk.
The quad was empty, except for a lone figure seated on a bench, a man in a tweed blazer taking notes in a composition book. He looked up in Martha’s direction, then down at the notebook, then toward her again. To escape his gaze, she looked elsewhere, beyond the campus buildings, above the crenellated rooflines.
It was there again. She had seen it before, on bad days, and now it stretched across the buildings, high above the spires and turrets, gelatinous and nearly invisible except for a network of threadlike capillaries. It pulsed and it heaved, breathing, alive.
Don’t look at it, Lovie. Lenny murmured in her ear, his voice moist and intimate. You know they don’t want you to see that, right? Just pretend you don’t see it.
Today Lenny was only a voice, but on some days she could see him. He was tall and gaunt, his skin white and mottled, like the belly of a toad. Spiked hair. Blue jeans shiny with stains. Canvas sneakers, gray and frayed.
Martha felt a touch on her shoulder, jerked around.
“Relax, Martha.” Wade leaned forward in the desk behind her. “You look as tight as a piano wire. You’ll do great.”
You won’t do great. You’ll die. Lenny hissed. S’truth. You’ll die if you even touch the paper.
This was the first time Wade had spoken to her in months. In the early weeks of the semester, he had flirted with her, singled her out for special attention. For a while, the attraction had been mutual. She liked his pug nose, his subversive sense of humor. But that was before.
Dr. Ellijay walked to the end of the next aisle, Martha’s aisle.
Have a look out, Lovie. ’Ere it comes.
Martha tried to concentrate, to review her mental notes. This was the final. Her grades had been floundering—that’s all part of the plan, innit?—but Martha had decided she would overcome the plan. She wouldn’t let them win.
Don’t touch the paper, Lenny rasped. It’s printed with poison ink. It’s like them colorful frogs in Ecuador. We learned about that in Biology 101, remember? Beautiful, but lethal. If you touch the ink, you’ll die.
Dr. Ellijay returned to her desk at the front of the room and glanced at her wristwatch. “All right, you have forty-five minutes,” she told the class. “You may begin now. Good luck.”
Look at ’er. She’s watchin’ you. She wants to see you fail. Touch the frog poison, and you’ll die. Look out the window. The man on the bench, he’s watchin’, too. They’re all watchin’. They’ve all been waitin’ for this moment, doncha see?
Martha stared at the page, paralyzed. She felt a drop of perspiration release from her armpit and crawl down her side. Around her, she heard the frantic scratching of her fellow students’ pens. They mingled with the sounds of the rats in the walls, the ones that chewed at the masonry with their sharp teeth, like yellow rice grains. The other students acted as if the rats weren’t there.
She glanced at the clock. Six minutes gone already. She looked down at the paper and tried to focus, to form the answers in her mind.
If you fall for it—don’t say I din’t warn you, Lovie.
She wanted to cry, or to scream, but she was motionless except for the pounding of her heart.
Don’t react. Don’t let ’em know. Don’t let ’em on to you, right? That’s the worst thing.
She heard Dr. Ellijay’s footsteps approach and stop next to her desk. She didn’t look up.
“Martha? It’s been ten minutes, and you haven’t even started. Are you all right?”
A swarm of ghostly, amoeba shapes floated in front of Martha’s eyes, and she felt as if her head would explode.
“Martha?” Dr. Ellijay placed a hand on her shoulder.
Martha screamed and lunged out of her seat, pushing the desk over, causing books to tumble out.
Run. It’s yer only chance—run like hellfire.
She bounded up the aisle, reached the door, and flung it open with a bang.
Run, Lovie.
In the hallway, Martha collided with a student on his cellphone, texting. She turned the corner onto another hallway and spotted the door to the custodial closet. She tried the knob. It opened. She slipped inside, squeezed next to a plastic mop bucket with rubber wheels, pulled the door closed, and slid to the floor.
In the darkness, she could smell ammonia. She heard the rats scurry around her. One brushed against her ankle, another along the back of her neck. Out in the hallway, footsteps approaching.
Voices calling her name. But Martha remained silent, invisible.
This is one thing we’re good at, hey, Lovie? Lenny said. We know how to vanish.
Chapter 1
Ten months later
Martha sat on an iron bench in front of the Wash-and-Fold and watched a column of ants as they marched away carrying crumbs from the smashed corner of a ham sandwich.
She had made the walk from the Pritchett House to Tobias Avenue in only fifteen minutes, strolling past dew-damp lawns and sprinklers, reaching the business district early. Nothing to do now but wait and watch the town slowly wake up. The morning was hazy, already humid. The rising sun painted sharp, expanding triangles of yellow on the buildings and storefronts.
Martha opened her leather satchel and unfolded the advertisement, the one Vince found on the bulletin board at the Gateway Center. She reread it for the hundredth time.
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
The Historical Society of Amberleen, Georgia, seeks a full-time intern to assist with book project. Must be bright, organized, and detail-oriented, able to hit the ground running. Will transcribe/edit interviews, write introductions, assist with research. Three-month term with stipend. Assist with book project. Must be bright, organized, and detail-oriented, able to hit the ground running. Will transcribe/edit interviews, write introductions, assist with research. Three-month term with stipend.
She felt restless, considered moving to the local diner for a cup of coffee, then scrapped the idea. Like so many things, caffeine was no longer admissible.
She wished she’d brought a book to read, or maybe a newspaper. Anything to take her mind off the fluttery feeling in her gut, a sensation that took hold yesterday when the Trailways bus crossed the Intracoastal Waterway and rolled past that sign in the grass median:
Welcome to Amberleen. Spacious Oaks, Friendly Folks.
Martha held the leather satchel close to her face and sniffed. The smell calmed her. It reminded her of her father, who kept it bulging with papers as he shuttled between their house and the university. She tilted the satchel and heard a faint rattle from within, a secret sound. The part of herself she would keep hidden.
A Lincoln Continental pulled up in front of the brick building across the street and parked. A tall woman with white hair and an old-fashioned, collared dress got out, unlocked the glass door to the building, and entered. Martha checked her watch—eight fifteen. She took out a mirror, freshened her lip gloss, and brushed a few strands of loose hair from her face. It was time.
***
Excerpt from THE GIRL IN THE MAZE by R. K. Jackson. Copyright 2025 by R. K. Jackson. Reproduced with permission from R. K. Jackson. All rights reserved.
R.K. Jackson is a former CNN journalist who now works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is the author of two novels of psychological suspense: the USA Today bestseller The Girl in the Maze and its sequel, Kiss of the Sun, both originally published by Penguin Random House.
Gripping tale of murder, greed, and mental health set
around an endangered Georgia coastal community.
The Girl in the Maze is the first book in author R.K.
Jackson’s Martha Covington Thriller series set along the Georgia coastline and
featuring a dying Geechee community, the descendants of former slaves. Martha
Covington, a young journalism student, had suffered a mental crisis while in
school, which resulted in an extended hospitalization. When she was released,
part of her easing her return to normal life was a light-duty internship with
the Amberleen (Georgia) Historical Society, helping to record and transcribe
interviews with the last surviving members of the local Geechee people living on
nearby Shell Heap, a small, isolated barrier island along the coast. However,
the untouched natural beauty of the island had finally caught the eyes of hungry
developers, and the contents of their deep pockets had grabbed the attention of
equally greedy county leaders. There was big money to be made if only the
Geechee weren’t in the way. Lydia Dussault, Martha’s new boss at the historical
society, is an important and politically-connected champion in the Geechee’s
corner, and suddenly Martha finds herself smack in the middle of a dangerous,
high-stakes fight not only for her hard-won sanity but for her very life.
Martha is a unique main character who is suffering from debilitating
mental health issues and is also receptive to voices and visions from the
spirit world. From the start, I wasn’t sure how reliable a narrator she
actually was, but her ensuing story made for riveting reading. She’s one of the
most game protagonists I’ve ever encountered. Although she feels vulnerable and
unprepared for her role, she’s willing to step outside her narrow comfort zone
to complete critical tasks for her new employer, uncovering some outstanding
clues, and this is before everything goes really sideways.
The Geechee storyline was a fascinating element of the plot,
and some of my favorite characters, Lady Albertha and Jarrell Humphries, were
from the community. I really enjoyed the wisewoman aspects of the story. The
Geechee people are a real and existing group, found in Georgia and several
other southern states.
The plot moves quickly, with twists and turns that kept me
highly engaged, but completely off-balance as I attempted to guess what was really
going on, especially as Martha’s mental state shifted. Early on, I began to
wonder if what I’d been led to understand was the impact of mental illness was
something else entirely. This question, and others, had me reading long and
late into the night, and I felt completely rewarded for doing so. I’m delighted
there’s a book two!
I recommend THE GIRL IN THE MAZE to readers of mysteries and
psychological thrillers.
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