This searing small-town thriller from bestseller Miranda (The Perfect Stranger) explores the complexities of female friendship and the picturesque fictions that money can buy. Avery Greer, a native of Littleport, Maine, is at a house party with the town's other 20-somethings awaiting her best friend, wealthy summer resident Sadie Loman, when the police arrive: Sadie's body washed up on the rocks near her parents' estate, and they want alibis from those in attendance. The discovery of a suicide note ends all talk of foul play, but Avery can't fathom Sadie taking her own life. A year later, Avery uncovers new evidence that underscores her suspicions and inspires her to investigate. The deeper Avery digs, the more secrets she unearths that are worth killing to keep. Flashbacks to the night of Sadie's death reveal fissures in the girls' relationship, casting doubt on Avery's honesty as a narrator. Sharply drawn characters both ground and elevate the bombshell-laden plot, while evocative prose heightens tension and conjures place. Miranda delivers a clever, stylish mystery that will seize readers like a riptide. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Every summer, the small, secluded coastal town of Littleport, Maine, welcomes the vacationers, who spend enough money to give the year-round residents their life's blood. Avery Greer calls Littleport home, but her best friend, Sadie Loman, is part of the summer elite. Her family even gave Avery a job managing their Littleport properties. Sadie's sudden death during an end-of-season party is labeled a suicide, but a year later, Avery is convinced there's more to it. Poking her nose into the Lomans' business exposes the sharp differences between the people of the town and those who make it theirs for the summer, putting her in danger. The vivid description of this isolated town sets the stage for the revelation of Littleport's secrets. The structure isn't as smooth as it could be as it moves among the summer of Sadie's death, the present, and moments in between, but Miranda's (The Perfect Stranger, 2017) exploration of how Avery's and Sadie's lives intertwine gives the story its depth. Fans of Michele Campbell and Mary Kubica, who like family drama supporting their suspense, will enjoy.HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: Bestselling author Miranda is among the vanguard of female-focused suspense authors; patrons will fondly remember who introduced her to them (you).--Tracy Babiasz Copyright 2019 Booklist

A year after her best friend's supposed suicide, a young woman must clear her name when new evidence is uncovered.The Lomans own much of Littleport, Maine, a fact that hasn't changed much since their only daughter's death a year ago. In the summer of 2017, on the night of the annual Plus-One party, aimed at summer people who've stayed a week longer than the traditional Labor Day end-of-season, golden girl Sadie Loman apparently threw herself off a cliff into the churning sea, but to those who knew her, especially her closest friend, Avery Greer, she seemed to have everything to live for. Year-round Littleport resident Avery was adrift after her parents' deaths when she was a teen, but when she met the mesmerizing Sadie, a summer person, her life took on new meaning. Sadie and Avery became so close, it was sometimes hard to tell where one ended and the other began. After Avery's grandmother died, Avery was alone, and the ridiculously wealthy Lomans seemed to welcome her into the family, even giving her a job as property manager for their coastal rentals and a place to live in their guesthouse. But everything fell apart after Sadie died. When Avery finds Sadie's phone hidden in the rental cottage where last year's Plus-One party was held, she turns it in to the policeafter doing a bit of snooping. Additionally, someone's been breaking into the rentals, and Sadie's brooding older brother, Parker, is acting strangely. Sadie's death is looking less and less like a suicide, and Avery is at the top of the suspect list. The Loman family's lies are rising to the surface, but can Avery keep her head above water? The narrative, which flips between 2017 and 2018, grows increasingly tense as Avery, who is a surprisingly reliable narrator, gets closer to the truth, but while Miranda (The Perfect Stranger, 2017, etc.) builds some creepy atmosphere in the lead-up, the final revelations are more sad than shocking. Most compelling are the class tensions between Littleport's year-round residents and the seasonal, moneyed tourists as well as the elusive nature of memory and the intricacies of friendship.An evocative and perfectly readable thriller, but genre fans will find few surprises within. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

BE STILL, my heart. After nine long years in the wilderness, Jackson Brodie is back on the job in BIG SKY (Little, Brown, $28). Kate Atkinson's no-nonsense private detective will do whatever it takes, lawful or otherwise, to bring his idiosyncratic brand of justice to wounded crime victims. Two sisters from Poland are Brodie's kind of people. Lured from their home in Gdansk with offers of work in London, Nadja and Katya are about to be forced into the sex trade by heartless con men hiding behind the imposing but bogus facade of Anderson Price Associates, a nonexistent employment service. Hold onto that plot thread because Atkinson makes child's play of spinning multiple story lines; it will eventually tie into several more. Before Brodie can do battle with the sleazy Anderson Price outfit, he has to convince Penny Trotter that he's turned up sufficient evidence her husband is cheating on her. The detective wonders whether his client takes masochistic pleasure in the humiliation. "Or did she have an endgame that she wasn't sharing?" Excellent question; hold onto that one too, and let's move deeper into the thickets of this wondrously complicated plot. What's a mystery without a murder? Atkinson introduces that tantalizing element when Vince Ives's virago of a wife, Wendy, is beaten to death with a golf club. That brings Vince and all his golfing friends and their spouses into the story, every last one of them examined in depth with equal parts wit and compassion. When suicidal thoughts bring Vince to the edge of a cliff, he explains himself succinctly to Brodie, his rescuer: "I've lived a very little life." And when Brodie seems a bit full of himself, he's smartly reminded that "there's nothing heroic about a lone wolf. ... A lone wolf is just lonely." Atkinson is writing about major crimes and strong themes here, but it's the voices of her characters that make you clutch your heart: people like Crystal, an abused woman who prefers "quiet men with low opinions of themselves," and Bunny, a drag queen dreaming of a triumphant stage appearance. As for Barclay Jack, a variety show comic, he's singing the song of a sad but beautiful death. THERE'S actually a term in Japanese - "honkaku," meaning "authentic" or "orthodox" - for diabolical puzzle mysteries. Soji Shimada's murder in the CROOKED HOUSE (Pushkin, paper, $14.95), meticulously, if a bit stiffly, translated by Louise Heal Kawai, is one of those lockedroom head-bangers that invite - "taunt" is more like it - the reader to decipher the clues and solve a murder along with an all-seeing detective. (Reader, I tried, I really tried; but I don't use the term "head-banger" lightly.) The novel is set in a grand, if bizarrely constructed, mansion at Christmas as a blizzard rages outside. We're at the home of Kozaburo Hamamoto, a captain of industry with a macabre sense of humor. Watching his guests flail about the sloping floors of his tilted house provides constant entertainment for the lord of the manor, who collects precious dolls like the life-size puppet found in pieces outside in the snow. Who would destroy such a pretty thing, the guests wonder - just as they later wonder who would destroy one of their number. TRUST THE VICTORIANS to come up with ingenious ways to kill. In Laura Purcell's uncanny Gothic mystery, the poison thread (Penguin, paper, $16), a 13-year-old seamstress named Ruth Butterham is put on trial for plying her sewing skills to murder her mistress. Impossible, you say? How else to explain why a bride wearing a pair of Ruth's embroidered gloves weeps in despair throughout the wedding service? Or why an infant suffering from "the strangling angel," as diphtheria was then known, dies peacefully while wearing a cap fashioned by Ruth? Considering the poor girl's wretched life - she's made to sleep in the cellar and do her sewing in the attic; she's tossed down the coal chute - it seems only fair that she should have the power to channel her rage into her creations. ("My labor, my stitches, my blood.") Call it magical thinking, but it's satisfying to believe that exploited children like Ruth have found the weapons they need to survive. if you want to sample the black humor of summer resort relationships, have breakfast at the local diner of a pretty coastal town like Littleport, Me., the setting for Megan Miranda's the last house GUEST (Simon & Schuster, $26.99). Dizzying plot twists and multiple surprise endings are this author's stock in trade, but she warms them up by establishing the close friendship between Sadie Loman, of the real-estate-owning Lomans, and Avery Greer, a rebellious townie. These teenagers are inseparable - until Sadie is found dead on the beach on the night of an end-of-season party. Her death is thought to be suicide, but Avery is having none of it, and she'll turn Littleport upside down to prove it was murder. There's not enough vicious, two-faced coffee-shop camaraderie for my savage taste, but Miranda treats the girls' lopsided friendship with warmth and sensitivity, while leaving the door open on how genuine it actually was. And, oh boy, does she ever know how to write a twisty-turny ending (or two, or more). MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.