Social Creature

Look around you. Who holds the most power in the room? Is it the one who speaks loudest, who looks the part, who has the most money, who commands the most respect? Or perhaps it’s someone like Christine Butcher: a meek, overlooked figure who silently bears witness as information is shared and secrets are whispered. Someone who quietly, perhaps even unwittingly, gathers together knowledge of the people she’s there to serve - the ones who don’t notice her, the ones who consider themselves to be important.

An electrifying debut thriller for fans of Anatomy of a Scandal, Apple Tree Yard and Gone Girl. Alison has it all. A doting husband, an adorable daughter, and a career on the rise - she's just been given her first murder case to defend. But all is never as it seems.... Alison's client doesn't deny that she stabbed her husband - she wants to plead guilty. And yet something about her story is deeply amiss. Saving this woman may be the first step to Alison saving herself. 

The letter is addressed to me. No stamp, swirly handwriting in black ink. I pull out a piece of paper, stiffening when I read the message. Hands trembling, the note slides to the floor: Your husband is having an affair. Six words written in neat block letters. Six words slipped through her letterbox, destroying her marriage, exposing Ella’s perfect life as perfect lies. But Ella has a plan: Alice is the answer to her problems. A lodger to help keep her afloat, a friend to keep the loneliness at bay. Only Alice has her own reasons for wanting to live at 46 Heath Street....

Everyone's invited. Everyone's a suspect. In a remote hunting lodge, deep in the Scottish wilderness, old friends gather for New Year. The beautiful one. The golden couple. The volatile one. The new parents. The quiet one. The city boy. The outsider. The victim. Not an accident - a murder among friends.

When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study conducted by the mysterious Dr Shields, she thinks all she’ll have to do is answer a few questions, collect her money and leave. But as the questions grow more and more intense and invasive, and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to feel as though Dr Shields may know what she’s thinking...and what she’s hiding. As Jess’ paranoia grows, it becomes clear that she can no longer trust what is real in her life and what is one of Dr Shields’ manipulative experiments.

Erin is a documentary filmmaker on the brink of a professional breakthrough, Mark a handsome investment banker with a bright future. They seem to have it all - until Mark loses his job and cracks start to appear in their perfect life. But they’re determined to make it work. They book their dream honeymoon and trust that things will work out - after all, they have each other. Could the life of your dreams turn out to be a nightmare?  

From the Sunday Times best-selling author of The Pool House, this dark and twisty thriller is perfect for fans of BBC's The Replacement, The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. You trust your friend, so you'd trust her daughter. Wouldn't you...? When an old university friend gets in touch with a request for work experience for her daughter, magazine editor Amy agrees. Twenty-year-old Josie walks into Amy's office, moves into the basement of her Notting Hill house and is soon helping out with her children after Amy's nanny is hit by a car.

Lynn Naismith gave up the job she loved when she married Ed, the love of her life, but it was worth it for the happy years they enjoyed together. Now, 10 years on, Ed has been diagnosed with early onset dementia, and things start to happen - things more sinister than missing keys and lost words. As some memories are forgotten, others, long buried, begin to surface...and Lynn’s perfect world begins to crumble. But is it Ed’s mind playing tricks, or hers....? 

Carrie is a successful TV producer in a high pressure job. She’s talented, liked, and well-respected. She and her husband, Adrian, an award-winning screenwriter, decided years before that they didn’t want children. But now, just as they’re both at the pinnacle of their careers, she has discovered she is pregnant and is shocked to find that she wants to keep the baby. But in a competitive industry where time off is seen as a sign of weakness, Carrie looks on the prospect of maternity leave with trepidation. Enter Emma, the temp, who is everything she could wish for as her cover: smart, willing and charming. 

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect caretaker for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite and devoted woman who sings to their children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris' upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint and is able to host enviable birthday parties. 

From the attic of a dilapidated English country house, she sees them - Cara first: dark and beautiful, clinging to a marble fountain of Cupid, and Peter, an Apollo. It is 1969, and they are spending the summer in the rooms below hers while Frances writes a report on the follies in the garden for the absent American owner. But she is distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she discovers a peephole which gives her access to her neighbours' private lives. 

There’s a moment, when you meet someone new, when the connection is so strong that making a friend can feel like falling in love. That’s how it was for Connie and Ness. They met in the park while their children played, and as they talked, they realised they were neighbours. Perhaps it was only natural that they and their families would become entirely inseparable. But when Ness’ marriage ends in a bitter divorce, she is suddenly at Connie’s house all the time. Connie doesn’t have a moment to herself, no time alone with her husband, not a second to chat to her kids.

Kit has risen to the top of her profession and is on the brink of achieving everything she wanted. She hasn’t let anything stop her. But now someone else is standing in her way - Diane. Best friends at 17, their shared ambition made them inseparable. Until the day Diane told Kit her secret - the worst thing she’d ever done, the worst thing Kit could imagine - and it blew their friendship apart.

It starts with a holiday. A three-year-old boy on a beach, and the hero who saves his life.But nothing is ever that simple.Tessa and Marcus know they owe Dave Jepsom more than they can ever repay.Yet even as he is walking from the sea with their son in his arms, there is something about him that makes them uneasy. He is not like other people that they know. Being with him makes them confront truths about themselves they would rather not see. The shock of that moment will change everything. And it's not how things start that matter. But how they end....

One night changes everything for Toby. A brutal attack leaves him traumatised, unsure even of the person he used to be. He seeks refuge at his uncle's rambling home, the Ivy House, filled with cherished memories of wild-strawberry summers and teenage parties with his cousins. But not long after Toby's arrival, a discovery is made. A skull, tucked neatly inside the old wych elm in the garden.