THE FELONS' BALL

A violent family saga in which no one emerges unscathed.

It’s almost time for the Felons’ Ball, an annual outdoor gathering held by patriarch Trey Macready on his spread in Ewald County, Virginia. The pre-Thanksgiving bash is facetiously named in recognition of the charges Trey and his best friend, Ben Marsh, managed to dodge when they were younger and running booze for the cutthroat family business. (Trey’s brother, Leo, did once serve a light sentence.) The accumulation of dark secrets relating to the family, which was suspected of tossing dead moonshining foes into bucolic Lake Monroe, does not stop there. On the night of the big party, held on Trey’s 50th birthday, Ben—who’s sleeping with Trey’s daughter, Natalie—gets stabbed to death on his boat. Did the murder have anything to do with the disappearance years ago of Ben’s son, Lanny, Natalie’s then-crush? As the vulnerable narrator of the novel, Natalie is putting together clues. The event reunites her and her sister Kaitlyn, with whom she runs a yoga studio in town, with their other sister, Cassie, a touring yoga teacher and podcaster who’s in from Los Angeles. As the investigation of Ben’s murder heats up—the unstoppable Natalie is soon sleeping with the handsome local sheriff—old family tensions flare up. Just how much have Mom and Dad been protecting their daughters from the truth and how much have they been protecting themselves? Everything points back to a 2011 boat accident that nearly killed young Natalie and from which she is still recovering mentally. Did the wrong helmsman serve time for it? Following Stewart’s impressive debut novel, The Good Ones (2023), this is a breakout achievement. Even dealing with the trickiest family dynamics, a shifting cast of characters, and complex twists of fate, she is in complete command.

A captivating, multilayered mystery by a rising star.