The mother of all stories about women who unwittingly marry charming sociopaths and gradually awaken to their peril.
Iles’ pioneering psychological thriller, filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Suspicion, returns from its first publication in 1932 to confront its myriad offspring.
When she first catches sight of Johnnie Aysgarth, youngest son of an impoverished aristocrat, Lina McLaidlaw is instantly swept off her feet by his playful insouciance and his exclusive focus on her to the neglect of everyone else on the scene. After a whirlwind courtship, they wed and enjoy a blissful honeymoon. It’s not till the couple returns to Dellfield, the spacious home Johnnie’s rented in Dorchester, that Lina, who stands to inherit £50,000 on her father’s death, learns that Johnnie doesn’t have a penny of his own or any idea how to make a living. She seeks to stem his endless cycle of borrowing greater and greater sums from anyone who’ll lend them by persuading him to take a job managing the estate of his distant relative Captain Melbeck, but then learns that he’s continued to gamble despite his promises to stop. In fact, Lina slowly comes to realize, she can’t believe a single word from her alluring, solicitous husband’s mouth. The pseudonymous Anthony Berkeley Cox (1893–1971) paces the rising false notes with surgical precision, revealing Johnnie as a liar, a cheater, a gambler, a thief, and ultimately a murderer. The most telling development here is not of Johnnie, who smilingly declines to change, but of Lina, who evolves from his target to his victim to his accomplice. Modern readers may well shudder at her willful obliviousness, but fans who recognize the persistence of this formula to the present will acknowledge the power of this indispensable template for three generations of brides-in-distress that followed.
The mother of all stories about women who unwittingly marry charming sociopaths and gradually awaken to their peril.Pub Date: July 15, 2025
ISBN: 9781464237614
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.
A struggling writer finds an unexpected muse when a mysterious man shows up at her cabin.
Petra Rose used to pump out a bestselling book every six months, but then the adaptation happened—that is, the disastrous film adaptation of her most famous book. The movie changed the book’s storyline so egregiously that fans couldn’t forgive her, and the ensuing harassment sent Petra into hiding and gave her a serious case of writer’s block. Petra’s one hope is her solo writing retreat at a remote cabin, where she can escape the distractions of real life and focus on her next book, a story about a woman having an affair with a cop. When officer Nathaniel Saint shows up at her cabin door, inspiration comes flooding back. Much like the character from Petra’s book, Saint is married, and he’s willing to be Petra’s muse, helping her get into her characters’ heads. Petra’s book is practically writing itself, but is the game she’s playing a little too dangerous? Does she know when to stop—and, more importantly, is Saint willing to stop? Hoover is no stranger to controversial movie adaptations and internet backlash, but she clarifies in a note to readers that she’s “just a writer writing about a writer” and that no further connections to her own life are contained in these pages—which is a good thing, because the book takes some horrifying twists and turns. Petra finds herself inexplicably attracted to Saint, even as she describes him as “such an asshole,” and her feelings for him veer between love and hate. The novel serves as a meta commentary on the dark romance genre—as Petra puts it, “Even though, as readers, we wouldn’t want to live out some of the fantasies we read about, it doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy reading those things.”
A dark and twisty look at just how far one woman is willing to go to find inspiration.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781662539374
Page Count: -
Publisher: Montlake
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
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