Abigail Dean

Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings - and with the childhood they shared.

Marty seems to do no wrong. Trent can’t seem to get things right. When they are thrown together by tragedy, their futures may be defined by one What really happened on Day One? Stonesmere is an English seaside suburb defined by poignant traditions passed from generation to generation, and the bonds of small town community spirit. But when a lone gunman disrupts a school assembly, he sets of a chain of events that throws this close-kint town into turmoil. Marty is a golden girl, albeit one sometimes in the shadow of her father’s accomplishments and the care of her mother—an outsider who became a beloved teacher. Meanwhile, Trent’s home life is in the only child of a mother forever on the lookout for the boyfriend who can remake their lives, Trent longs for Stonesmere’s stability. But he and his mother only pass through.  In the wake of the violence in Stonesmere, Trent is transfixed by the news coverage of his former home, and his sense that something doesn't quite add up. As he dives deeper, he falls under the spell of a slick online media personality and the conspiracies he peddles. As Marty fumbles to play the part of the grieving good girl, she becomes the focus of these conspiracies—and Trent’s attention.   Opening with a gripping moment of terror, and then jumping foward in time to show how secrets, trauma, miscommunications, and unrequited feelings reverberate through a lifetime, Abigail Dean once again delivers a riveting page-turner full of hope in the face of despair.

“A page-turner par excellence, written with unobtrusive brilliance, [and] full of sharply observed lines…. The Death of Us lives up to the hype.”—Stephen King Bringing together the slow-burn simmer of psychological suspense and the propulsive drive of crime thrillers, The Death of Us is the story of a marriage turned inside out by a violent encounter that sets fire to the hairline faults that were there from the start Late on a summer’s evening when they are thirty years old, husband and wife Edward and Isabel’s home is invaded by a serial killer. Theirs was a classic story of young love that moves into true partnership—but their solid foundation implodes in the wake of this violence.  At fifty-eight, they are reunited for their tormentor’s trial and forced to confront their lifelong love the secrets, passions, and encounter that bind them still. Isabel has waited years for the man who nearly ended her life to be caught. As she’s tracked news of his increasingly violent criminal life, she’s connected with other survivors and prepared for the moment that she’d get to read her victim impact statement aloud in court. She is sure she’ll speak her truth and finally let the past go. Edward has spent the years since the break-in—and the breakdown of his marriage—trying to figure out how a near-miss with death killed so much else in their shared life. Unlike Isabel, he’s not eager to relive these terrible memories. Even though he’s moved on—he’s remarried, his old life almost unrecognizable ​to him now—he can’t resist accompanying Isabel to their intruder’s sentencing. What would revenge or justice feel like? Can closure set Isabel free? And what might that freedom mean for Edward?  A captivating portrait of a marriage told through the lens of the explosive, violating moment that catalyzed its implosion, The Death of Us digs into the stories we tell ourselves about love, and what love can bear. With the same sharp psychological insight and unreliable voices that made Girl A a bestseller, The Death of Us is a return to form for Abigail Dean.