The story hooked me from the first page. The premise--a twelve-year-old girl is the only one in a cult who has not vanished, who then spends her entire life trying to understand what happens--is absolutely engrossing. Buccola is a natural at understated but extremely tense conflict both within and outside a character. I tore through this book wanting to find out what happened to the cult. Plus, I love books about cults and what they do to people.
What would you do if the past showed up on your doorstep?
A woman who grew up in a cult must decide if she can trust the stranger claiming to have answers to the dark mysteries of her childhood in “a standout thriller with something deeper on its mind: how the past doesn’t just haunt you, it reshapes you” (The Seattle Times).
“I tore through this book and was genuinely shocked by its ending!”—Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines
You'd be hard pressed to be more original than a book set during the Peloponnesian war about two unemployed potters who force a bunch of Greek prisoners to put up a play by Euripides. As quirky as it sounds, it's deeply emotional and, my favorite thing, understated. Entire stories and visuals are described with daubs of words. It is an absolute pleasure to consume.
John Boyne is a go to author for me. I will read anything he writes, as soon as it comes out. This book did not disappoint. All the characters are so real, I felt I was in their full-formed heads as I read. I appreciated the connections between the different stories. I kept wanting to step in and stop the characters from doing unwise things, and they stayed with me.
From bestselling author John Boyne, a gripping and profound exploration of guilt, blame, trauma, and the human capacity for redemption.
In The Elements, acclaimed Irish novelist John Boyne has created an epic saga that weaves together four interconnected narratives, each representing a different perspective on crime: the enabler, the accomplice, the perpetrator, and the victim.
The narrative follows a mother on the run from her past, a young soccer star facing a trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and a father on a transformative journey with his son. Each is somehow connected to the next, and as the…
She left the NYPD in the firestorm of a high-profile case gone horribly wrong. Three years later, the ghosts of her past roar back to terrifying life.
When NYPD undercover cop Laney Bird’s cover is blown in a racketeering case against the Russian mob, she flees the city with her troubled son, Alfie. Now, three years later, she’s found the perfect haven in Sylvan, a charming town in upstate New York. But then the unthinkable happens: her boy vanishes.
Local law enforcement dismisses the thirteen-year-old as a runaway, but Laney knows better. Alfie would never abandon his special routines and the sanctuary of their home. Could he have been kidnapped–or worse? As a February snowstorm rips through the region, Laney is forced to launch her own investigation, using every trick she learned in her years undercover.
As she digs deeper into the disappearance, Laney learns that Alfie and a friend had been meeting with an older man who himself vanished, but not before leaving a corpse in his garage. With dawning horror, Laney discovers that the man was a confidential informant from a high-profile case she had handled in the past. Although he had never known her real identity, he knows it now. Which means several other enemies do, too. Time is running out, and as Laney’s search for her son grows more desperate, everything depends on how good a detective she really is–badge or no.
