Keep This For Me
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Published by: Atria Books
Release Date: October 7, 2025
Pages: 352
ISBN13: 978-1668050644
Synopsis
The acclaimed author of the “chilling, mesmerizing debut” (Rachel Harrison, author of The Return) Beneath the Stairs returns with a gripping, atmospheric suspense novel about a woman investigating a serial killer’s connection to her mother’s disappearance—for fans of I Have Some Questions for You and Notes on an Execution.
One hot August night in 1993, a young couple go to a party. When their car breaks down, they are picked up by a truck driver who attacks the man and abducts the woman. She is never seen again.
That woman was Fiona Green’s mother.
When the trucker, Eddie Ward, is caught, a mass grave of bodies is discovered in his backyard but Fiona’s mother isn’t there. Thirty years later, on his prison deathbed, Ward insists that he didn’t kill her, so Fiona finds herself back in the small town where her mother disappeared. Fighting demons of her own, she’s shocked when history repeats itself: another woman, another roadside breakdown, and another disappearance. Only this time the primary suspect is Jason Ward, Eddie’s son. Desperate, Fiona hunts down answers, unaware that she is being drawn into a dangerous trap.
With Jennifer Fawcett’s signature “suspenseful and immersive” (Library Journal) prose, Keep This for Me is a fresh, spellbinding exploration of what we unwillingly inherit from our parents and how one random act can send ripples years into the future.
Excerpt
Prologue
ANA
August 29, 1993
1:30 AM
The lake is the great devourer; the giver and taker of life. It has its own weather system; its water circulates up into the bluest blue summer sky, gathers into the fat-bellied purple clouds, then slams down into itself with glee. On the surface, the living splash, their pleasure boats tear up the calm water, their fishing poles dip in to feed. They think they own the lake, but it is only letting them play. When it decides, it will swallow them whole. Ask the ones below. Ask the sailors who lie in their broken beds with undelivered boxes of coal, of wool, of rum and buttons. They sleep where the water moves slow and dark and holds its secrets.
The young woman who swims now, trailing blood from a gash on her leg, believes the lake will save her. She loves this water and has swum in all its moods. But if she gets too weak, she too will slip under and join the sleeping ones on the bottom.
It’s night and there’s a summer storm, the sudden electric kind that rips a hole in the sky and then is gone just as quickly. On the shore of the nearby campground, the families huddle in their tents and listen to the rain and wind. They hear the waves crashing, but none of them know about the young woman out in that churning darkness, swimming for her life. They will learn soon. A shoe in the sand, a purse in the grass; these are what remain. In the coming days, they will watch the news and say, “We were camping so close when he killed her.” They will shiver with the glee of voyeurs.
And the lake will go on.
The rain will fall, the waves will hit the beach.
And below the surface, the dead will keep their secrets.
