The Last Wife

May 11, 2020
Marie Langham, the unreliable narrator of this gripping thriller from Hamilton (The Perfect Girlfriend) set somewhere in England, wants to honor the last request of her best—and possibly only—friend, Nina Thompson, who has recently died of melanoma: to protect Nina’s family. Marie immediately offers to help Nina’s husband with the children. From there it’s a short hop to moving into the Thompson family home and making herself indispensable. After years of regarding Nina’s life with envy, Maria at last can play the role she has always dreamed of, though not everyone is pleased with this new reality. “The speed at which you gleefully took over has left a few of us a bit shell-shocked,” a good friend of Nina remarks. As unwelcome people from Marie’s past pop up on her doorstep, and as she realizes that her view of Nina was colored by her own longing, she comes to a terrifying decision that leads to murder. Everybody has a nasty side, but that’s just one of the pleasures of this cunning whodunit. A devious plot is another. Hamilton knows how to keep the pages turning. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, ICM.

February 1, 2020

Following the LJ-starred Our House, which was Candlish's U.S. debut, The Other Couple features middle-aged Clare and Jamie and the young couple they befriend, the upwardly aspiring Melia and Kit, until one day Kit vanishes after being seen arguing with Jamie on their regular ferryboat commute. Giller Prize winner Coady's Watching You Without Me opens with Karen back home in Novia Scotia after her mother's unexpected death, tending to her sister full-time and depending on her mother's old caregiver, Trevor, of whom she becomes increasingly suspicious. In JP Delaney's Playing Nice, the Riley and Lambert families are devastated to learn that their two-year-olds were switched at birth--and it gets worse. A prize finalist in Australia, Downes brings us disappointed thespian Emily Proudman, who thinks she's found The Safe Place she needs when she agrees to become housekeeper/nanny at the French estate of the Dennys--but her employers' dark secrets will out. In debuter Glass's Someone's Listening, scandal-ridden psychologist and radio star Faith Finley attends the launch of her new book with her husband, but when her car crashes afterward, the police claim he was not with her (70,000-copy first printing). In Hamilton's The Last Wife, Marie promises to watch over terminally ill friend Nina's family, but after Nina's death she starts uncovering uncomfortable intimations about what happened on a long-ago vacation they took in Ibiza that left Marie's boyfriend dead (200,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Finally, in Harriet Tyce's The Lies You Told, anxious mom Sadie Roper, newly single and newly reemployed as a barrister, is thrilled to win the attention of Liza, queen-bee mother at her children's school--but at what cost? From the author of Blood Orange; with a 40,000-copy first printing.

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