Family Secrets: Three Thrilling Page-Turners
Event Details
Our families can be our closest confidantes – but what if we can no longer trust the people we hold closest? Join a discussion with authors of some of the most exciting new thrillers in Canada as they delve into terrible secrets, devastating lies, and what happens when facades begin to crack.
Moderated by Laurie Petrou.
Books featured:
- The Push by Ashley Audrain (ebook / paperback)
- The Almost Wife by Gail Anderson-Dargatz (ebook / paperback)
- The Perfect Family by Robyn Harding (ebook / paperback)
- Sister of Mine by Laurie Petrou (ebook)
The Push
Viking (Penguin Canada)
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, supportive mother she never had to her new baby Violet. But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe doesn’t find the connection with her daughter she expected. She’s convinced that something is wrong with Violet–the little girl is distant, rejects affection, and becomes increasingly disruptive at preschool.
Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she is imagining things. Fox doesn’t see what Blythe sees; he sees a wife who is struggling to cope with the day-to-day challenges of being a mother. And the more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity…
Then their son Sam is born–and with him, Blythe has the natural maternal connection she’d always dreamed of. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth about herself, her past, and her daughter.
The Push is a rare and extraordinary gift to readers: a novel about the expectations of motherhood we’re taught not to challenge and what really happens behind the closed doors of even the most perfect-looking families. It’s impossible to put down and impossible to forget.
The Almost Wife
HarperAvenue
Kira is engaged to the man of her dreams: he’s charming, handsome, wealthy, and a great dad to their baby, Evie, and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Olive. Having grown up with a troubled relationship with her mother and mostly estranged from her father, Kira craves a close family and secure home, and with Aaron, Evie and Olive, she almost has it. The only problem is Aaron’s ex-wife, Madison, who’s out of control and trying to get to Olive. When Kira takes the girls out of town to her childhood summer home and finds out that Madison has followed them, she panics. Between the beach and the forest on Manitoulin Island, Kira fights to protect Olive, Evie and her fiancé, until a dark secret threatens to unravel the life that is almost hers. With the future she has built hanging in the balance, and her past haunting her at every turn, Kira must choose who to believe and who she wants to be.
The Perfect Family
Simon & Schuster
Thomas and Viv Adler have a picture-perfect family. Affluent and attractive, with two well-mannered kids almost out of the nest, they live in a beautifully restored Craftsman house in a well-to-do neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Their jobs are secure; their children are thriving; the world is their oyster.
Until one morning, when they wake up to find that their house and car have been pelted with eggs. Thomas dismisses it as the work of a few out-of-control kids, but when a smoke bomb is tossed on their front lawn, and the tires on their BMW are punctured, he begins to worry. The family installs surveillance cameras but they show nothing but grainy images of shadowy figures in hoodies. Unable to identify the perpetrators, they are helpless as the assaults escalate. The police assure them that this is just the work of bored teenagers. But no one in the Adler family believes it. After all, each of them has a secret—kept not only from the outside world but from each other.
Seventeen-year-old Tarryn is dabbling in a seedy online world; her older brother, Eli, has dropped out of college and refuses to tell his parents why; and Thomas and Viv have their own secrets that began as harmless fun and relief from the pressures of everyday life, but have grown into something darker and more dangerous. As the Adlers grapple with their guilt, fear, and shame, the assaults grow deadly. Their “perfect” façade is crumbling, and it may be too late for any of them to do anything about it in this addictive and twisty suspense novel that will keep you turning pages until its explosive ending.
Sister of Mine
HarperCollins
Penny and Hattie are sisters in a small town, bound tight to the point of knots. They share a secret they cannot escape, even while it pulls them apart. One night, a match is lit, and Penny’s terrible husband is killed – a marriage going up in flames, and offering the potential of a new life. The sisters retreat into their family home – a house of secrets and memories – and try to live in the shadow of what they put in motion. But Penny’s husband is not the only thing they are hiding, from the outside world and from each other. Under a cloud of long-held resentments, sibling rivalry, and debts unpaid, the bonds of sisterhood begin to crack. How long will Penny and Hattie demand the unthinkable of each other? How often will they say, “You owe me,” and when will it ever be enough?
