'Highsmithian... highly readable, twisty and shrewd' HANYA YANAGIHARA (on Instagram), author of A Little Life
'Atmospheric, diabolical fun' LUCY FOLEY, author of The Midnight Feast
'Disturbingly enjoyable' EMMA HEALEY, author of Elizabeth is Missing
'A taut, wicked masterpiece' MONA AWAD, author of Bunny
Five years ago, 81-year-old Maggie Burkhardt fled her native Wisconsin in suspicious circumstances. She has come to rest somewhere she can imagine staying forever: the Royal Karnak Hotel in Luxor, Egypt.
Maggie is no sweet little old lady. She has a nasty, nosy habit: she spies on her fellow…
'Abdullah's legal thrillers make John Grisham seem like a maiden aunt' Sunday Times Crime Club
'An enthralling, heartbreaking and thrilling courtroom drama that had me shouting out loud and gripped until the last page' Nadine Matheson, author of The Jigsaw Man
'Brilliantly tense, this is another clever page turner from Kia Abdullah that I couldn't put down. Just superb' Louise Hare, author of This Lovely City
'Twists and turns aplenty . . . The author's greatest strength lies in her sensitive and relatable description of the relationship between sisters Leila…
Sloane Cheney has no intention of ever returning to the South Carolina island town where she grew up. She enjoys her life in the big city and teaching at the college there. The thought of revisiting the place where her mother deserted her family is too painful.
But when Aunt Millicent, town matriarch and owner of the family’s beachfront property, is murdered, Sloane must go back to sign off on the sale of the grand family home to developers. She soon finds that old friendships have shifted, as townspeople disagree over the development that would reshape their sleepy village. Sloane is directly in the line of fire, under suspicion by the police chief because of her inheritance and by her former neighbors who question her long absence.
With family members and old friends swirling treacherously around her, Sloane doesn’t know who to trust, especially after a nearly fatal accident in the beach house. She digs into her family’s history, uncovering new information about her mother’s disappearance. What she discovers raises questions: Was her aunt’s murder a simple case of greed? Or was it related to her mother’s long-ago vanishing?
