By Kate Alice Marshall
Flatiron Books, 20204. 324 pages. Fiction
Emma hasn't told her husband much about her past. He knows her parents are dead and she hasn't spoken to her sisters in years. Then they lose their apartment, her husband gets laid off, and Emma discovers she's pregnant right as the bank account slips into the red. That's when Emma confesses that she has one more asset: her parents' house, which she owns jointly with her estranged sisters. They can't sell it, but they can live in it. But returning home means that Emma is forced to reveal her secrets to her husband: that the house is not a run-down farmhouse but a stately mansion, and that her parents died there. Were murdered. And that some people say Emma did it. Emma and her sisters have never spoken about what really happened that night. Now, her return to the house may lure her sisters back, but it will also crack open family and small-town secrets lots of people don't want revealed. As Emma struggles to reconnect with her old family and hold together her new one, she begins to realize that the things they have left unspoken all these years have put them in danger again.
This is an atmospheric and chilling thriller set in New England which makes it a great Fall read. The book kicks off especially eerie as it begins with Emma and her sisters as younger girls discovering their parents' bodies. What's next is an intricately plotted mystery that focuses on character development. While Emma is the protagonist, I enjoyed that Marshall also gives chapters to the other sisters for a multi-perspective narrative. As always, I rate thrillers on whether I could guess the twist or not and this one had enough misdirection and red herrings to keep me guessing.
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By Sally Hepworth
St. Martin's Press, 2024. 359 pages. Fiction
From the outside, Alicia, Jessica and Norah might seem like ordinary women you'd meet on the street any day of the week. Sure, Jessica has a little OCD and Norah has some anger issues. And Alicia has low self-esteem that manifests itself in surprising ways. But these three have a bond that no one can fully understand. It's a bond that takes them back decades, to when they were girls, and they lived on a farm with a foster mother named Miss Fairchild. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild, and they thought they were free. But the reach of someone with such power is long, and even though they never saw her again, she was always somewhere in the shadows of their minds. When bones are discovered buried under the farmhouse of their childhood, they are called in by the police to tell what they know. Against their will, they are brought back to the past, and to Miss Fairchild herself.
By Lisa Matlin
Bantam Books, 2023. 278 pages. Fiction
Sarah Slade is starting over. She and her husband just bought a beautiful though crumbling Victorian house in a charming and lush community. The fixer-upper is a perfect opportunity to reach a new audience on her highly successful lifestyle blog, and it also serves as a distraction from her failing marriage. But Black Wood House has a grisly history--one involving a gruesome murder-suicide. And even as Sarah wallpapers over the house's horrifying past, she knows better than anyone that a new façade can't conceal every secret. The renovations are a challenge: The workers coming by to inspect and fix the house are acting erratically and experiencing strange accidents--and there's only so long she can continue to sleep in the bedroom with the bloodstained floor and suffer the mysterious footsteps she hears from the attic. When menacing notes start appearing everywhere, Sarah becomes convinced that someone or something is out to kill her. The more she remodels Black Wood House, the angrier it seems to become. With every passing moment, Sarah's life spirals further out of control and with it, her sense of reality. Though she desperately clings to the lies she's crafted to conceal her own secrets, Sarah Slade must wonder…was it all worth it? Or will this house be her unraveling?
BW
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