The Christmas Guest

A brilliantly taut novella set over Christmas in 1989 England, revisited from the perspective of present-day New York. Ashley Smith is an American college student spending her junior year in London. An orphan, she has no holiday plans, until another student, Emma Chapman—they’re barely friends—invites her to her family’s manor house in the country. For an American, it’s pretty much “cozy Cotswold heaven”: a rambling home filled with cousins and friends, pine boughs and holly, smelly dogs and board games, plenty of alcohol, nightly hikes to the village pub, and absolutely no heat. Much of the narrative comes through Ashley’s diary, which is a real hoot in its Bridget Jones-ness, especially when she’s reporting on Adam, Emma’s supremely handsome brother. Except things start to get weird. A strange, little man is seen lurking on the wooded shortcut to the pub. Then Ashley learns that Adam is suspected of murdering a local girl several months before—but proof is lacking. Despite being short enough to read in one sitting, maybe with a pot of tea at the midpoint, this skillfully constructed work of crime fiction still manages to provide plenty of shock and awe.