The Fifth Letter

Joni, Deb, Trina and Eden have been friends since their first year of high school, bound together by a coincidence of shared initials and star signs. Careers, husbands and children have slowly pulled them apart, and their annual getaways may be coming to an end. Determined not to lose them, Joni gathers the four for one more week at a beach house.

On a wine-soaked night, they revive an old teenage habit and dare one another to write anonymous letters confessing their most private truths. The letters expose a rocky marriage, a hidden addiction, a secret pregnancy, a frightening diagnosis. Then Joni finds a fifth letter half-burned in the fireplace — one no one will admit to writing, filled with hatred and a long-nursed grudge aimed at one of them.

Nicola Moriarty's novel is a tense, twisting story of female friendship and the secrets that curdle beneath it, asking how well any of us really know the people we love most, and what it takes for old affection to turn to something darker.