THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Named a summer book to watch by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, Oprah, Paste, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and Nerd Daily
"Propulsive ... a dizzying Gothic whodunit."
âNew York Times Book Review
Bestselling author Riley Sager returns with a Gothic chiller about a young caregiver assigned to work for a woman accused of a Lizzie Borden-like massacre decades earlier.
At seventeen, Lenora Hope
Hung her sister with a rope
Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hopeâs End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.
Stabbed her father with a knife
Took her motherâs happy life
Itâs now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hopeâs End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offerâI want to tell you everything.
âIt wasnât me,â Lenora said
But sheâs the only one not dead
As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear thereâs more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessorâs departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truthâand that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.