An Evening with Ann Dávila Cardinal: Hear the Dead

Event Guidelines

• Each ticket will include either a paperback copy of Hear the Dead or a $10 RBB Gift Card.
• Additional copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
• An audience Q&A and signing will follow the talk.

About the Book

The past never dies—it just changes its tune in this edgy, speculative thriller following an aging woman who begins to hear the murders of girls she used to know in her punk rock youth and now must uncover their killer and reckon with a past she's desperate to leave forgotten.

For more than forty years, Elena Altieri has been hiding from the tragedies of her New York City punk rock youth. Tragedies that left her best friend, Sin, dead, and other women in their orbit missing. Now, the past is catching up with her in more ways than one. Not only is she hearing strange noises under the hum of her tinnitus, but the photographs she took of a recently deceased musician are going viral, thrusting her back into a world she hoped would remain locked away forever.

When Elena begins to hear the screams of a woman ringing in her ears, she becomes convinced that she's somehow hearing Sin’s murder. Desperate for answers, she has no choice but to revisit her past, and what she’ll uncover will not only force her to reckon with her own fractured memories, but might prove that Sin, and other innocent women from their youth, were the victims of an unspeakable crime that only she can solve.

Old punks never die, and Elena’s going to prove that.

About Ann Dávila Cardinal

Ann Dávila Cardinal is a Puerto Rican author, educator, and bookseller. Her novels include the punk rock thriller, Hear The Dead, and the magical realist novels The Storyteller’s Death, and We Need No Wings. She also writes for children and young adults, and teaches in the University of San Francisco’s newest MFA in Writing program. Ann lives with her husband in Vermont where she needle felts and competes as a powerlifter.

About Megan Collins

Megan Collins is the author of five psychological thrillers, including The Winter Sister, The Family Plot, and Cross My Heart, which won the 2026 International Thriller Writers Award for Best Standalone Novel. Her books have been official selections for Book of the Month Club, Aardvark Book Club, and Barnes & Noble Monthly Picks. An educator for many years, she currently teaches and mentors aspiring authors through Jericho Writers, and she is the editor in chief of 3Elements Review. She lives in Connecticut.