First published 2016
David Harwood has lost his wife and his job. He moves back into his childhood home in Promise Falls, New York, with little to show for the years he spent away. Then he visits his cousin Marla and finds her caring for an infant she says an angel left on her porch. The baby is not hers. Nobody gave her permission to keep it. David starts asking questions, and the answers get worse fast. The real mother turns up dead, and Marla is the obvious suspect. David does not want to believe she killed anyone, but wanting and knowing are different things. He digs anyway, because that is the kind of person he is, even when the truth might destroy what little family he has left. Promise Falls looks quiet from the outside. It is not quiet. An old Ferris wheel sits abandoned at the edge of town, a rusting reminder that something went wrong here long before David came back. Whatever happened in this town's past, someone has decided the whole place should answer for it. David is standing in the middle of it, and he does not yet know how deep it goes.
Genres: fiction, domestic-fiction, mystery, crime, contemporary, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful
Tropes: family-drama, mystery-unraveling, unreliable-circumstances
Setting: Promise Falls, New York
Period: 21st-century, contemporary
528 pages · Paperback · Berkley
Content warnings: death, murder