The Last Housewife

Eight years ago, Shay Evans and her college friends fell under the spell of a charismatic older man and the "community" he built around control, discipline, and devotion. Shay escaped—but she never fully left it behind. Now settled into an ordinary marriage in Texas, she is pulled violently back into that past when she learns that Laurel, one of the women she once shared that world with, has been found dead, ruled a suicide.

Shay does not believe it. Teaming up with a true-crime podcaster, she returns to the world she fled to find out what really happened to Laurel—and discovers that the man who once shaped their lives, and the movement he preached, never went away. As she digs deeper, the line between investigating the past and being consumed by it grows dangerously thin.

Ashley Winstead's dark, propulsive thriller is an unflinching look at misogyny, coercive control, and the seductive machinery of abuse. Intense and disturbing, it is intended for adult readers and deals frankly with difficult subject matter.