Cipher: A short story

by Sara Foster

When Beatrice leaves her family behind to visit her father, she never imagines she might not see them again. But then a bomb goes off close to home, and Beatrice must rely on a stranger's help to find out what happened - and whether or not her husband and children have survived.

28 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 24, 2016

About the author

Sara Foster is a critically acclaimed, bestselling fiction author with a passion for psychological suspense and a keen interest in exploring zeitgeist issues and strong female characters in her nail-biting novels. Her latest, When She Was Gone (2025), begins when an au pair and two small children vanish from a remote Australian beach, and is a race-against-time thriller, exploring themes around misogyny, wealth, power and control.

Sara is also the author of dystopian thriller The Hush and seven more bestselling novels. Two of her books have been optioned for television, and You Don’t Know Me was adapted into a chart-topping podcast series by Listnr. Sara has a PhD in creative writing (studying maternal representations in fiction) and lives in Perth, WA, with her husband, two daughters, three cats, Luna the cavoodle and Sunny the bearded dragon.

Follow Sara on Substack at Story Matters (for readers) and The Resilient Author (for writers). Or visit her website: www.sarafoster.com.au

Reviews

[Tez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heard that the crime author was Australian and published in the US, so I figured her work would be worth a try. Absolutely, if this short story is anything to go by. I figure it's set in Australia somewhere, but I would've preferred some more detail (such as town names) to help ground the setting. Still, the rural heat and isolation rings true, as a mysterious incident leaves a woman stranded in a country town with seemingly no other person in sight.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

As usual Sara takes you on an unexpected ride.
Cipher had me intrigued from the very beginning, wanting to find out what would happen to the main character Beatrice. Little did I know there would be a very large, unexpected twist ending. Such a surprising twist that I actually had to go back and read the last page again TWICE, just to make sure that I had read and comprehended the end.