You deserve to know

Nassau Court is an attractive subdivision in Bethesda, Maryland. It's perfect for families, with nice homes, plenty of space, good schools, and friendly neighbors. Couples Scott and Aimee, Lisa and Marcus, and Gwen and Anton socialize every weekend, help out with each other's kids, and are good friends. Idyllic, right? But behind the jovial, beer-drinking men and the designer-legginged women are dark secrets and hidden struggles. When one of the men is found dead, the layers of artifice are quickly peeled back, and what once looked like perfect lives begin to fall apart, piece by piece. Social anxieties, phobias, suspicion, infidelity, skeletons in the closet, money worries, blackmail, a criminal past, and women who'll stop at nothing to protect their families quickly destroy the placid surface of the three Nassau Court families. Thompson (Such a Lovely Family, 2024) initially creates a genial, sociable atmosphere that quickly turns dark, with steadily escalating tension, unexpected twists around every corner, revelations about how dark human nature can be, and an ending that is as shocking as it is shattering.

In this captivating standalone from Thompson (Such a Lovely Family), tragedy and scandal rock a neighborhood in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Gwen Khoury, Aimee Stern, and Lisa Greco-King enjoy weekly get-togethers with their husbands and children, but at one such gathering, tensions rise after Lisa questions Aimee's parenting and Gwen's husband, Anton, has too much to drink. At the end of the evening, Anton gets uncomfortably close to Aimee and whispers "You deserve to know" in her ear before leaving. The next day, the police inform Gwen that Anton's corpse was found near a local bar. Suspecting homicide, investigators question Gwen and Anton's neighbors, discovering that Aimee's husband, Scott, was one of the last people to see Anton alive. Soon, the women start to turn on one another, and flashbacks reveal cracks in their friendship that predate the skirmish in the book's opening scene. Thompson drops her fully fleshed-out characters into a mile-a-minute plot peppered with blindsiding twists, making the novel easy to devour in a single sitting. This is domestic suspense at its finest. Agent: Katie Shea Boutillier, Donald Maass Literary. (Mar.)