When Mei was eight years old, her aunt tried to sell her to a strange man with a foreign accent. Betrayed amongst the backwater villages of Cambodia, she ran for her life. When she was found, grass-stained and teary-eyed in a ramshackle orphanage, security consultant Quinton Mills fell in love with her fiery spirit and dogged will to survive.

Now, years later, Mei has gone missing and this time, Quinn fears the worst. When the head of a victims' shelter informs him that Mei and several other girls have been abducted in the night, he sets out against all odds to find her and bring her home.

Unraveling the mystery of Mei’s disappearance takes him from the jungles of Cambodia to the seedy back alleys of Bangkok's notorious red-light district, and onwards to Cairo, a city consumed by corruption and political tension, the beating heart of North Africa on the brink of revolution. As clues to Mei's whereabouts continue to fade among the shadows, his desperate search for an innocent child drags him ever deeper into the clandestine underworld of the modern slave trade.

Matejs Kalns was raised in the Latvian community of Toronto, Canada. He holds degrees in History from the University of Ottawa, and Human Security & Peacebuilding from Royal Roads University. He has worked in the fields of education and human rights for over ten years. Beasts of the Night is his first novel.

www.matejskalns.com