Your Life Is Mine

April 29, 2019
In the prologue to this engrossing novel from Ripley (Find You in the Dark), Chuck Varner, the leader of the Your Life Is Mine cult, walks into a Stilford, Calif., mall one day in 1996 with Blanche, his seven-year-old daughter, and a handgun. Chuck tells Blanche to go home to her mother, Crissy, then he embarks on a shooting spree that ends with him killing himself. Twenty years later, Blanche is living under a new name in Los Angeles, where she works as a documentary filmmaker. The past comes back with a vengeance when Crissy, from whom she’s been estranged for years, is shot to death. Blanche returns to Stilford, where the police officer she asks about Crissy’s case gives her evasive answers. When Blanche does her own digging, she discovers Crissy was murdered by one of Chuck’s followers with the purpose of luring Blanche home. The members of her father’s resurgent cult want Blanche to be part of it. The tension builds as the action drives to the dramatic climax. Fans of dark thrillers will be satisfied. Agents: Samantha Haywood and Stephanie Sinclair, Transatlantic Literary.

May 1, 2019
Ripley's title was the slogan of heroine Blanche Potter's father, who went on a shooting spree in a California shopping mall in 1996. He took Blanche, his then-seven-year-old daughter, with him, insuring that Blanche would be forever traumatized. Blanche has moved mountains to escape her past, cutting off past relationships, becoming a documentary filmmaker, and forever guarding herself against any chance that her past might become known. But, of course, it does, in the shape of an investigative journalist who shows up at her documentary's premiere, outing her and telling her that her mother has just died. The plot spans out from this discovery. Blanche's mother was killed in a home invasion, but police are slow to open an investigation. While Blanche investigates, the reader follows another protagonist, the Boy, who was part of the Your Life Is Mine cult that developed in the wake of the atrocity committed by Blanche's father, and who is gearing up for his own mass shooting. Well-wrought characterization of a woman who can't seem to escape her past or the future creeping up on her.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)