Never Ask Me

April 20, 2020
Set in an affluent Austin, Tex., suburb, this cunning and complex domestic thriller from bestseller Abbott (The Three Beths) centers on the Pollitt family: parents Iris and Kyle and their teenage children, Julia and Grant. Early one morning, Julia and a friend, Ned, find Ned’s mother, Danielle Roberts, murdered in a neighborhood park. The Pollitts’ lives are turned upside down as all four family members become entangled in the subsequent investigation. Danielle—who facilitated the Pollitts’ contentious adoption of Grant from a St. Petersburg orphanage when he was a baby—had a complicated history with Iris and Kyle. Julia is tangentially involved in Ned’s prescription drug dealing business, and Grant has been receiving disturbing emails warning him that his parents are lying to him. Excerpts from Iris’s old journal chronicling Grant’s adoption process raise the suspense. And while the jaw-dropping conclusion feels a bit contrived, readers will appreciate the savvy way in which Abbott fits together the pieces of the puzzle. This page-turner will please old and new fans alike. Agent: Peter Ginsberg, Curtis Brown.

July 1, 2020
The discovery of a murdered woman, Danielle Roberts, on a bench in a public park in a suburb of Austin, Texas, sets off a chain of events that shake a seemingly average family to its core. Abbott's new thriller digs deeply into the minds of the members of the Pollitt family, friends and neighbors to the dead woman, each of whom is affected by the murder in his or her own way. As curiosity about the woman's death grows, the suspicious eyes of the Pollitts turn to one another. The question looms: Could one of them have committed the crime? And who is sending anonymous messages to one of the Pollitt children? Who is threatening the Pollitt father? Abbott's use of multiple points of view is strikingly effective, providing a smart way of showing the reader the broad-strokes picture while zooming in and out to focus on specific details and moments. Questions stack up in the reader's mind until the urge to race through the book is virtually unstoppable. Another fine, suspenseful novel by a master of the psychological thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Beginning with the discovery of a neighbor's body on a park bench in the Austin suburb of Lakehaven, this audiobook devolves into a labyrinth of suspects, plots, and motives that become more outlandish with every new twist. And, as each chapter is told by a different character who is portrayed by a different narrator, there's a lot to juggle. So young Julia narrates her chapters and mimics her father's brothers' voices, and in their respective chapters, they might mimic Julia's. While the beginning of the audiobook starts as a mystery, it devolves into a psychological suspense when the childhood of one character yields motives for most of the other characters and ends as an international political thriller. The result is one too many genres for most listeners to follow, or swallow. L.W.S. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine