A Light in the Forest cover art

A Light in the Forest

A Novel

 Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for £5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

A Light in the Forest

By: Melissa Payne
Narrated by: Kay Eluvian
Try Standard free

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £22.99

Buy Now for £22.99

About this listen

From Melissa Payne, bestselling author of The Night of Many Endings, comes an emotional and suspenseful novel about the weight of secrets and the healing power of friends and family.

Vega Jones escapes an abusive relationship with nothing but her two-month-old baby and the van she grew up in. Her destination is a small Ohio town her late vagabond mother left years ago. It’s one full of nobodies, her mother warned. That makes it the ideal refuge for Vega to lie low, feel safe, and maybe learn more about a past her mother never spoke of.

Vega warms to the town and to new acquaintances like Heff, the young deputy and artist who prefers his yard art to actual policing, and empathetic Eve, a local farmer whose near-death experience gave her more than just her life back. But even in this welcoming community, there’s an undercurrent of something unsettled, talk of a tragedy that unfolded in the woods years ago, and a mystery connected to Vega in ways she couldn’t have anticipated.

As a mother on the run and following a path of mounting risks and illuminating secrets, Vega discovers that even during the darkest of times, there’s light in unexpected places.

©2022 Melissa Payne (P)2022 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved. Fiction Genre Fiction Magical Realism Small Town & Rural Women's Fiction Fantasy Magic

Critic reviews

”…brought vividly to life in a true 'theatre of the mind' experience by the narrative storytelling skills of Kay Eluvian…riveting entertainment.”—Midwest Book Review

“The authentic characters and their realistic struggles make this introspective tale entirely believable. Vega’s resilience is sure to endear her to readers.”—Publishers Weekly

“A Light in the Forest is a thrilling portrait of women finding their footing when all odds seem stacked against them.”—BookTrib
All stars
Most relevant
The story was good but i found it hard to listen to and really struggled to get into it , because of the narrators voice.

Struggled to get in to

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Felt the story was pretty good but the narrator’s voice drove me mad. Better to read this book rather than listen to it.

Narrator was irritating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.