Psychological

It’s Tuesday afternoon in suburban Stanhope, and all is as it should be. Family man Dr. William Wooler is at a local motel with one of the hospital volunteers. Except it turns out that today she’s decided to dump him. Furious, he heads home, only to discover his nine-year-old daughter, Avery, in the kitchen, having skipped out on choir practice. As “difficult” as she is mouthy, she’s sucking down Oreos and doing a good job of pressing her father’s buttons. But when Wooler strikes her with a blow to the head that knocks her to the floor, it’s still a shock, to both of them and the reader. Dad-of-the-year hightails it out of there—he goes for a drive to cool off—and when the Woolers’ son gets home from basketball practice, he finds the house empty. Where’s Avery? Thus begins this intense domestic suspense novel in which an entire community is taken apart and turned inside out. Families are interviewed, oftentimes iteratively, histories are resurrected, houses are searched, motives are examined, and what the cops don’t expose, the media does. All the pieces come together brilliantly in a shocking finale.

The Parker family started off as regular Texans, but now financier Jeff just can’t fail and they are Rolling. In. Money. His wife, Heather, seems unaware of how he makes such a fortune, but who cares? Home is now a California mansion where they have a few shelves of books in an otherwise empty library; the rest of the house is almost empty as well, but with Heather determined to spend their fortune as fast as possible, the minimalist look won’t last.
Daughter Piper, 18, misses her old friends and hates her mom’s relentless efforts to live through her children, primarily by making them into champion horse riders. Piper has rejected that life and Heather’s focus is now on younger daughter Maple, who’s terrified of the huge horses she’s forced to ride and a terrible equestrian, but desperately trying to improve. Her tortured lessons quickly become a cash cow for Kieran Flynn, the cult-leader-like boss of the $10,000 per month (PER MONTH!) stables near the Parker’s behemoth home.
What starts as dysfunction becomes much more serious when a body is found at the stables. Stories of Mable’s horse-obsessed, mean-girl acquaintances and their horse-obsessed, mean-girl moms alternate with interviews by the steely Detective Perez, who wants none of these characters’ nonsense. Get ready to enter another world and a perplexing puzzle: we don’t even know who’s dead till near the end of the book, let alone who the killer is. A great summer read

It’s the early months of the pandemic, and Kelly Doyle—who has recently moved to Philadelphia to live with her fiancé—finds herself with few friends and no job. But when her spouse-to-be calls off their wedding, Kelly hits a new level of despair. Her one bright spot is her childhood friend Sabrina; the two recently renewed their friendship thanks to the socials.

Sabrina has it all: a career as a best-selling romance author, a Virginia mansion right out of Elle Decor, and a handsome albeit hyper-masculine husband. So when Sabrina invites Kelly to move in with them—yes, it’s a little weird—Kelly is desperate enough to say yes. Before you can say “throuple” (why wasn’t that the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year?) the three are in bed together—this ain’t no cozy—and quickly establish a threesome. Until Kelly comes across the naked photos of another woman, who could well be her doppelganger, and learns that she is a former lover of the couple who has mysteriously vanished. Will Kelly be next?

A sexy read in which no one is right, no one is wrong, and everyone is lying. By the author of We Were Never Here, this is the ultimate summer read.