The Family Secret

Austyn Murphy and Lowell Bass have just got engaged when Lowell's parents die unexpectedly, and the two of them travel to the Bass estate to bury them and settle the affairs.

The house is old and the family in it is guarded in a way that goes past grief: traditions nobody explains, rooms nobody uses, a welcome that is technically correct and not warm. Late one night Austyn overhears a whispered conversation and understands that the world she has agreed to marry into has not been described to her honestly.

An old friend, Emily, calls with bad news of her own and is invited to the estate, which puts a second outsider inside it. Kiersten Modglin runs the book on a deadline: decisions about Austyn's future are being taken by other people, and she has a limited window to work out what the Bass family actually is before she becomes part of what it conceals.