All These Beautiful Strangers

Did Grace Fairchild simply walk away from her Cinderella life as the wife of a blueblood New York real estate billionaire—as suggested by bank surveillance footage showing her cleaning out the couple’s safe deposit boxes days before she disappeared—or did something more sinister happen? A decade later, the question haunts Grace’s 17-year-old daughter, Charlie, the appealingly acerbic narrator of Klehfoth’s engrossing if flawed debut. Now a junior at Knollwood Augustus Prep, the New Hampshire boarding school her father attended, whip-smart Charlie is beginning the pledging process for an ultra-exclusive secret society, the A’s. As the high-stakes initiation game tests Charlie’s loyalties and values, she discovers some explosive family history—challenging almost everything she has grown up believing about her parents. Unfortunately, the author’s plotting fails to measure up to her ingenious amateur sleuth, relying throughout on colossal coincidences and ending with a denouement that’s surprising primarily for its implausibility. Still, Klehfoth’s ability to draw in the reader shows that she’s an author to watch. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (July)