My Summer Darlings

Jen Hansen, Kittie Spears and Cynthia Nichols have been friends since childhood. All three are nearing forty and living in the same insular East Texas town they grew up in. Their days run on afternoon wine, gossip about the other women in the neighborhood, and complaints about ageing and their ungrateful teenagers.

Then Will Harding buys one of the neighborhood's grandest houses and moves in. He is charming and mysterious, and each woman sees in him an answer to something she has been missing. None of them is prepared for how thoroughly he unsettles their lives.

As Will draws close to each of the three in turn, curiosity hardens into obsession. Their friendships strain, and their families come under threat. When he suddenly withdraws, each woman scrambles to work out why his attention has gone. What they find is darker and more dangerous than any of them expected.

The book is a suburban thriller with a steamy, summer-heat atmosphere, built on manipulation, desire and murder. It opens with a woman alone in a forest who believes she will die and is certain a man is coming back for her. Expect a story of friends turning on each other, with menace rising as the season wears on.