A Familiar Stranger

Lillian Smith writes obituaries, lives with an inattentive husband and a son who barely looks up, and has settled into a life she can describe in one sentence. Then she meets David in a coffee shop, and for him she becomes someone else entirely — a woman with no deadlines, no history, and nothing to lose.

The invented self takes over. Lillian pulls away from her closest friend, then from everything real, and when evidence of the affair surfaces on her son's social media the risk stops being abstract. Each lie needs another. And the deeper she goes, the clearer it becomes that hers is not the only double life in the house.

A. R. Torre writes a standalone domestic thriller with a narrator who is, by design, not to be trusted. Short chapters, a twisting middle, and a cold read on what people will do to be wanted.