Strangers in the villa A novel

DEBUT After discovering that her husband Curtis has been unfaithful, Sydney isn't sure she can ever forgive him. Somehow, Curtis convinces Sydney that buying a ramshackle villa in Spain will bring them back together; months later, little progress has been made on renovating the villa and turning it into a winery, let alone reviving their rocky marriage. So when Bianca and Damien, two twentysomething Australian tourists whose van has broken down outside the villa, turn up, Sydney latches onto the idea of inviting them to stay in an effort to shake things up--which they do, in ways that Sydney and Curtis never imagined. Combine a dysfunctional marriage right out of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, a sun-soaked Spanish setting, some targeted seduction, and a twisty plot that contains many secrets, and this novel has all the ingredients for a bingeable work of suspense. VERDICT Fans of Lucy Foley's An Apartment in Paris or Shari Lapena's Not a Happy Family will be equally entranced by Harding's smartly crafted debut.--John Charles