The Last Wife

February 1, 2020

Following the LJ-starred Our House, which was Candlish's U.S. debut, The Other Couple features middle-aged Clare and Jamie and the young couple they befriend, the upwardly aspiring Melia and Kit, until one day Kit vanishes after being seen arguing with Jamie on their regular ferryboat commute. Giller Prize winner Coady's Watching You Without Me opens with Karen back home in Novia Scotia after her mother's unexpected death, tending to her sister full-time and depending on her mother's old caregiver, Trevor, of whom she becomes increasingly suspicious. In JP Delaney's Playing Nice, the Riley and Lambert families are devastated to learn that their two-year-olds were switched at birth--and it gets worse. A prize finalist in Australia, Downes brings us disappointed thespian Emily Proudman, who thinks she's found The Safe Place she needs when she agrees to become housekeeper/nanny at the French estate of the Dennys--but her employers' dark secrets will out. In debuter Glass's Someone's Listening, scandal-ridden psychologist and radio star Faith Finley attends the launch of her new book with her husband, but when her car crashes afterward, the police claim he was not with her (70,000-copy first printing). In Hamilton's The Last Wife, Marie promises to watch over terminally ill friend Nina's family, but after Nina's death she starts uncovering uncomfortable intimations about what happened on a long-ago vacation they took in Ibiza that left Marie's boyfriend dead (200,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). Finally, in Harriet Tyce's The Lies You Told, anxious mom Sadie Roper, newly single and newly reemployed as a barrister, is thrilled to win the attention of Liza, queen-bee mother at her children's school--but at what cost? From the author of Blood Orange; with a 40,000-copy first printing.

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