Reliable suburban creepiness for some night when you already can’t sleep.
A grim trauma from 20 years ago returns in the person of an old friend who survived it to wreak vengeance on a strong heroine who turns out to be surprisingly vulnerable.
Penelope Ritter Cox used to have it all—congenial job, successful husband, perfect children, established New Jersey home—but her yield went down to maybe 70% when Brett Cox’s insurance firm went bankrupt and he lost his job. Now things are getting worse on a daily basis. The slide begins the day Willamena Blaine turns up uninvited on Penelope’s doorstep, pleading for Pip (a nickname Penelope loathes) to take her in because she’s fled her abusive husband, Trent, and has nowhere else to go. Penelope hasn’t seen Willa since their gap year after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, which they spent sharing a disused church with charming, abrasive Jack Avila, asexual virgin Bree Haren, and Bree’s male friend Flynn Lockhart. The year ended badly when a fire in Church House claimed the life of one of its tenants, an incident Penelope secretly has good reason to feel guilty about. Once she’s grudgingly allowed Willa into her house, her old buddy wastes no time in poking around among her belongings, wearing her jewelry, encouraging Penelope’s children to confide in her, and seducing Jaime Heller, the widowed neighbor and friend Penelope’s developed a crush on. Moretti, who’s plowed this territory before, amps up the betrayals inch by inch until you’re wondering if things can possibly get worse. They absolutely can, and not just because of that anticlimactic secret Moretti reveals in a carefully calibrated series of flashbacks.
Reliable suburban creepiness for some night when you already can’t sleep.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2171-5
Page Count: 333
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.
A middle-aged woman channels her best Miss Marple when she finds herself facing a nightmare from her past as she seeks to make sense of her present.
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day a runaway dog turns up on her doorstep. The dog is chipped, and with the help of a local vet and her loyal stepson, Dexter Lombardi, Jane traces the dog’s home to the edge of Hampstead Heath, in London—a place that brings back the memory of a terrifying night from her youth, when a handsome man picked her up and took her back to this very house. Everything there felt wrong; she just managed to escape, certain that if she had stayed, she would have died that night. Now, soon after knocking on the door and returning the dog, she discovers that he had run away from an Airbnb near her house, where he had been staying with a young woman who seems to have disappeared. With the help of Dexter; his father, Tony, her second ex-husband; Tony’s former security enforcer, Tobias Wilson; and her own gift for connecting with people, Jane sets out to find the woman, taking her first steps on the path to becoming a private investigator. While Jane serves as the heart of the novel, Jewell also narrates chapters from several other characters’ points of view, all of which chip away at the horror that is the house on the Heath. By slowly revealing past and present simultaneously, Jewell keeps the mystery fresh as she plays with Gothic tropes and the timeless imagery of “a house of horrors” embodying human sin. She doesn’t flinch from exploring the depths of depravity in this house—and its humans.
A haunting, timeless exploration of the evil men do—and the imprint it leaves behind.Pub Date: June 23, 2026
ISBN: 9781668033906
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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