The Overnight Guest

Wylie Lark writes true crime, and she has taken herself to an isolated farmhouse to work on her next book. A snowstorm closes in, which suits her fine: a fire, no noise, nothing to interrupt the pages. The house has a history, though. Decades earlier, two people were murdered there and a girl vanished without a trace.

As the storm worsens, Wylie is stuck inside with the house's past and with secrets of her own. Then she spots a small child outside in the snow. She carries the child indoors, out of the cold, and starts looking for answers about who the child is and how the child got there.

The search turns uneasy fast. The farmhouse is less cut off than Wylie believed, and someone out in the storm will go to any length to reach her and the child.

This is a suspense thriller with a closed-in setting, where the weather and the old crime hang over every scene. Expect a tense, chilling read built on a single location, a woman with something to hide, and a child who needs protecting.