Lisa Jewell

Cheyne Walk is one the most elegant streets in Chelsea, where London’s upper crust lives. Its mansions, however, are not just for the rich to live out their lavish, carefree lives; at times they also turn into the scenes of unspeakable crimes, like the one that the police find laid out before them at 16 Cheyne Walk, following an anonymous tip as to a possible triple suicide. The bodies of a married couple, Martina and Henry Lamb, are on the kitchen floor, along with a third man, unidentified. In a bedroom on the first floor, a ten-month-old baby girl, from the look of her, is alive and well, but there’s a rabbit’s foot under the blanket in her cradle. When asked, the neighbors report that many children and several adults have lived in that house in recent years, and every one of them has mysteriously vanished, including the Lambs’ two older children. Yet this atrocious crime, and possibly the others before it, are shelved by Scotland Yard, a wound that gapes open once more for Libby, or Serenity Lamb, the infant who was adopted by the Jones family twenty-five years earlier, growing up as Libby Jones. To her astonishment, the young woman has inherited the mansion on Cheyne Walk, and its appalling past along with it: investigations that went nowhere; traces of blood and DNA, unknown; messages and strange writings on the walls; secret panels, and an herb garden some of whose plants had been used for what was obviously a case of the collective suicide of her real parents. What really played out behind those closed doors? What happened to the other residents of the house in Chelsea? Above all, what do those tragic events have to do with the odd sounds coming from upstairs, considering Libby is certain that she is alone in this gloomy, if eerie, abode?

Lisa Jewell (London, 1968), worked in fashion retail until she changed tack and became one of the U.K.’s best-selling mystery writers, with nineteen novels to her credit and five million copies sold the world over. Her first novel, Ralph’s Party, topped the sales charts for debut novels out in 1999. She went on to publish Thirtynothing (2000), One-hit Wonder (2001), A Friend of the Family (2003), Vince and Joy (2005), 31 Dream Street (2008), The Truth About Melody Browne (2010), After the Party (2011), The Making of Us (2012), Before I Met You (2013), The House We Grew Up In (2014), The Third Wife (2014), The Girls (2016), I Found You (2017), Then She Was Gone (2017), Watching You (2019), The Family Upstairs (2019), Invisible Girl (2021), and The Night She Disappeared (2021). Upcoming in 2022: the sequel to The Family Upstairs, entitled The Family Remains.

Alex Michaelides

Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek Tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike – particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge. Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld? When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything – including her own life.

Alex Michaelides (Cyprus, 1977) studied English literature at the University of Cambridge and film at the American Film Institute of Los Angeles. He wrote the screenplays for two films directed by James Oakley: The Devil You Know (2013), starring Rosamund Pike, Lena Olin and Jennifer Lawrence, and The Con Is On (2018), starring Uma Thurman and Tim Roth. He published his first novel, The Silent Patient, in 2019; it was a sensational debut and one of the best-selling books of the year. Plan B, the production company founded by Brad Pitt, acquired the film rights to the novel, and The Maidens will be adapted for the screen as well: the small screen. In fact, Miramax has commissioned the British screenwriter and actress to adapt the book for a TV series, presumably with the same title.