The seismic shift between childhood and adulthood underlies these forthcoming novels, which seek to answer questions tied to characters’ pasts in order to illuminate their presents.
Call Me Evie
J.P. Pomare, Putnam, Mar. 2019
Pomare’s psychological suspense debut is set in rural New Zealand, where the author, now living in Australia, grew up. At age 17, his unreliable but sympathetic narrator doesn’t know whether she’s a captive or a legitimate dependent of Jim, the man she lives with. He calls her Evie, but when her foggy memory begins to give her glimpses of a life she lived in Melbourne—in which she went by the name Kate—she sets out to find the truth.
Tim Johnston, Algonquin, Jan. 2019
Audrey Sutter needs to get home to Minnesota to see her father, a retired sheriff who is dying of cancer, and a fellow college student volunteers to drive her. The car plunges into the Black Root River just outside their destination, and only Audrey survives. The incident recalls a similar one from 10 years earlier, an unsolved murder that haunts Audrey’s father—and that Audrey feels moved to solve. PW’s starred review called the thriller “outstanding”: “The nuanced plot delves deep into how a community—and surviving relatives—deal with the aftermath of a death.”
The Last House Guest
Megan Miranda, Simon & Schuster, June 2019
From the author of All the Missing Girls (433,000 print copies sold) comes the tale of an unlikely childhood friendship that ends in tragedy. In the harbor community of Littleport, Maine, it’s rare for a local and a kid from a family of wealthy vacationers to bond, but Avery Greer and Sadie Loman remain close for 10 summers, until their early 20s, when Sadie, the local girl, is found dead in what police deem a suicide. A year later, the still-grieving Avery is certain people in the community blame her, and sets out to learn what really happened.
Run Away
Harlan Coben, Grand Central, Mar. 2019
In Coben’s first novel since moving to Grand Central with his longtime editor Ben Sevier, a father learns that his estranged daughter has been spotted in New York City’s Strawberry Fields playing guitar. Simon follows up on the lead and finds her strung out, a shadow of the girl he remembers—and she runs from him. And so he chases after her, into the dark underworld of addiction and something far stranger.
