Book description
Edgar Award Winner for Best Novel
One of CrimeRead's 10 Best Reissued Mysteries of 2018
In this Edgar Award–winning thriller, a young housewife with two lively daughters and an endlessly crying baby battles domestic chaos as well as growing suspicions of the household's new lodger. Are Louise's fears the product…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Hours Before Dawn as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Celia Fremlin has been my discovery of the year. Her books have been described as “domestic noir” – and The Hours Before Dawn is nothing if not “noir” as the heroine, sleep-deprived mother Louise, is forced to confront the terrible danger that has infiltrated her home.
Fremlin’s writing is elegant, witty, and perceptive, and the book is a real page-turner that kept me reading long into the night.
But what really drew me in was Fremlin’s exposure of the dark side of the domestic with her dissection of the gendered family dynamic – the pressure on Louise to be a…
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