by Emiko Jean
Part of Chelsey Calhoun
First published 2026
Detective Chelsey Calhoun has everything she wants. She's married, expecting a baby, and excelling in her career. Then a brutal murder case arrives that will destroy her sense of security. A woman lies dead. Her sixteen-year-old daughter Naomi has vanished without a trace. The victim went by Anne Walker, but her real name was Rika Takahashi. She fled from a remote Japanese farm to build a new life in suburban Seattle, reinventing herself repeatedly along the way. Rika was always running from someone or something through Tokyo's criminal underworld and an isolated Idaho town. Now Chelsey races to locate Naomi before she becomes the next casualty. But investigating Rika's secret past forces Chelsey to confront painful questions about her own family history. The deeper she digs, the more she realizes that certain secrets are deadly enough to kill for. The most threatening revelations may strike closest to home.
Genres: domestic-fiction, mystery, crime, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotionally-intense, fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful
Tropes: parallel-timelines, personal-investigation, secrets-and-lies, unreliable-past
Setting: Seattle, Tokyo, Idaho, Japanese farm
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
320 pages · Hardcover · Simon & Schuster
Content warnings: murder, violence