Miranda Beverly-Whittemore – författare

On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century; it's the kind of place where children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour. Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts, and the moneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead. Before she knows it, she has everything she's ever wanted: friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs. But as Mabel becomes an insider, a terrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact - and what they might do to anyone who threatens them. Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family's dark secrets and make Ev's world her own.

“It’s time to come Home. All five of you. Or else.”Saskia was a damaged, lonely teenager when she arrived at the lakeside commune called Home. She was entranced by the tang of sourdough starter; the midnight call of the loons; the triumph of foraging wild mushrooms from the forest floor - and Abraham, Home's charismatic leader, the North Star to Saskia and the four other teenagers who lived there, her best and only friends.Two decades later, Saskia is shuttered in her Connecticut estate. She’s not scared of the world; it’s her own capacity for ruthlessness that’s made her lock herself away. In the shadow of Home’s stately pines all those years ago, Abraham weaponised this trait, singling her out to do his bidding. The results haunt her daily.Then her worst nightmare comes true: she and her estranged friends receive threatening letters. Unless they return to the land in rural Maine, the terrible thing they did as teenagers - their last ditch attempt to save Home - will be revealed.Returning to Home from vastly different lives to confront their blackmailer, the five must not only face their dark past, but reckon with what they are capable of now that they’ve been reunited. How far will they go to bury their secret forever?