Kate Michaels’ mother Lily is dead, the victim of a brutal attack in her tony suburban Baltimore home. Overwhelmed by grief, Kate is trying to hold it together for the sake of her newly widowed father and her own husband and young child, and is heartened by the appearance of Blaire Barrington at Lily’s funeral. Blaire and Kate—high school BFFs who fell out when Kate married her husband Simon—fall immediately back into their old routines. Kate (now a prominent doctor) is the accomplished but anxious achiever, while Blaire (who has since become a bestselling mystery author) serves as her defender against all enemies.
However heartened Kate is by her friend’s return, she’s horrified to discover that Blaire’s protection may actually be necessary—whoever killed Lily has been leaving notes threatening Kate and her five-year-old daughter Annabelle, sometimes accompanied by gruesome clues. As the messages become increasingly macabre, and the police still struggle for leads on the case, Blaire decides to take matters into her own hands, investigating friends and relatives with no care for the existing relationships. As she digs deeper, none of Baltimore’s moneyed elite is safe—but will her search for the truth push her or the increasingly unstable Kate over the edge?
Told with the lightning pace of The Last Mrs. Parrish but with life-and-death stakes this time, The Last Time I Saw You will be sure to thrill and delight Constantine’s fans and garner new ones.
Archives
The Confessions of Frannie Langton
A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London—a remarkable literary debut with echoes of Alias Grace, The Underground Railroad, and The Paying Guests.
All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being held in the Old Bailey. The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore.
But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn’t know how she came to be covered in the victims’ blood. But she does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams’ London home—and into a passionate and forbidden relationship.
Though her testimony may seal her conviction, the truth will unmask the perpetrators of crimes far beyond murder and indict the whole of English society itself.
The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a breathtaking debut: a murder mystery that travels across the Atlantic and through the darkest channels of history. A brilliant, searing depiction of race, class, and oppression that penetrates the skin and sears the soul, it is the story of a woman of her own making in a world that would see her unmade.
Unsheltered
From the New York Times bestselling author, Barbara Kingsolver, a timely new novel that looks to history as well as to contemporary life to explore the human capacity for resiliency and compassion in times of great uncertainty.
The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock
Freefall
A propulsive debut novel for readers of Gone Girl and Before the Fall about survival at all costs and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter.
The Oracle Year
Will Dando is your ordinary Brooklyn guy: he’s handsome, smart, dabbles in music (he has a band) and technology. One day he wakes from a dream in which he’s been given 108 specific predictions for the future—about everything from crop futures, to medical diagnoses, to sports scores. Along with his best friends Hamza and his wife Miko, Dando refashions himself The Oracle, and dispenses these predictions to the highest bidder (i.e. hedge funds, politicians) and/or on his Web site. The three get very very rich very, very fast—but then realize that they need to turn their good fortune into good works for the world. But do-gooding is not so easy—especially when lots of other people, including members of the government and a very famous televangelist, want in on Will’s special talent. Like a comic book without the comics, The Oracle Year has a rollicking, colorful style as it follows our hero from New York to Washington to the Middle East as Will and Co. try to make the world a better place. Along the way, they meet a cast of wacky and nefarious characters—and a few good people, too, like the journalist Will finally decides to unburden himself to. Part thriller, part political comedy, part love story, The Oracle Year is one man’s exuberant take on the millennial view of the world.
Magpie Murders
From New York Times bestselling author of Moriarty and Trigger Mortis, this fiendishly brilliant, riveting thriller weaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie into a chilling, ingeniously original modern-day mystery. When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different to any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job. Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: One of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder. Masterful, clever, and ruthlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective.
Mercury
Donald believes he knows all there is to know about seeing. An optometrist in suburban Boston, he is sure that he and his wife Viv, who runs the local stables, are both devoted to their two children, and to each other. Then Mercury—a gorgeous young thoroughbred with a murky past—arrives at Windy Hill and everything changes. Hilary, a newcomer to town, has inherited Mercury from her brother after his mysterious death. When she first brings Mercury to board at Windy Hill everyone is struck by his beauty and prowess, particularly Viv. As she rides him, Viv begins to dream of competing again, embracing the ambitions that she harbored before she settled for a career in finance. Her daydreams soon morph into consuming desire, and her infatuation with the thoroughbred escalates to obsession. Donald may have 20:20 vision, but he is slow to notice how profoundly Viv has changed and how these changes threaten their quiet, secure world. By the time he does it is too late to stop the catastrophic collision of Viv’s ambitions and his own myopia. Mercury is a riveting tour de force that showcases this “searingly intelligent writer at the height of her powers.” (Jennifer Egan).
Commonwealth
The acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author—winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize—tells the enthralling story of how an unexpected romantic encounter irrevocably changes two families’ lives.
The Comet Seekers
A magical, intoxicating debut novel, both intimate and epic, that intertwines the past, present, and future of two lovers bound by the passing of great comets overhead and a coterie of remarkable ancestors.