The Walls

June 26, 2017
In this pulse-pounding thriller from Overton (Baby Doll), 32-year-old single mother Kristy Tucker falls for her teenage son’s judo instructor, Lance Dobson. At first, long, depressing days spent working as a public information officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice leave Kristy eager for laughter-filled evenings with Lance. Then the couple marry, and Lance begins to physically and emotionally abuse Kristy. She tries to leave, but he threatens to kill her son and ailing father. Part of Kristy’s job involves interviewing prisoners. When death-row inmate Clifton Harris asks about a bruise on Kristy’s face, she breaks down and tells him everything. She balks at Clifton’s suggestion that someone in prison might be able to help, but eventually concedes that killing Lance is her only option. After a languidly paced setup, the book’s tension and drama increase exponentially, and readers become as invested in the wrongfully convicted Clifton’s freedom as they are in Kristy’s. Many will applaud Overton’s implicit criticism of capital punishment and laissez-faire attitudes toward domestic violence. Agent: Eve Attermann, William Morris Endeavor.

August 1, 2017
Kristy Tucker is a survivor. Pregnant at 16, she dropped out of school, then got her GED and raised her son, Ryan, with the help of her now-ailing father, Pops. She supports her small family as the public-information officer at the state prison, The Walls, in her Texas hometown, where she arranges interviews with death-row inmates and attends their executions. When Ryan is 14, he secretly starts taking martial-arts lessons from Lance Dobson, a man Kristy at first berates but grows to love. But just weeks after their perfect wedding, domestic abuse starts, and Kristy's life becomes a nightmare. When Lance begins implicitly threatening Ryan and Pops, Kristy sees only one solution: Can she carry it out, and what will be the consequences? She confides only in sympathetic inmate Clifton Harris, who's sentenced to die soon, still maintains his innocence of the murders for which he was sentenced, and is the only person who sees signs of her abuse. Overton (Baby Doll, 2016) spins a fast-moving, increasingly compelling tale in which readers will root for Kristy, even as no good outcome for her anguish appears likely.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)