In this tense, spellbinding thriller set over the course of a single day, a woman prepares for a party that goes dreadfully wrong—for fans of Ashley Audrain and Lisa Jewell.
Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party is in full swing. The neighbors all have cocktails, the catered food is exquisite—everything’s going according to plan.
But Nadine—devoted wife, loving mother, and doting daughter—finds herself standing over a dead body in her basement while her guests clink glasses upstairs. What happened? How did it come to this?
Rewind to that morning, when Nadine is in her kitchen, making last-minute preparations before she welcomes more than a hundred guests to her home to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But her husband is of little help to her, her two grown children are consumed with their own concerns, and her mother—only her mother knows that today isn’t just a birthday party. It marks another anniversary as well.
Still, Nadine will focus just on tonight. Everyone deserves a celebration after the year they’ve had. A chance for fun. A chance to forget. But it’s hard to forget when Nadine’s head is swirling with secrets, haunting memories, and concerns about what might happen when her guests unite.
“A terrific family drama. I adored it—absolutely compulsive reading as all the family skeletons are clamouring to get out of the cupboard. I inhaled this book over twenty-four hours.”
— LIZ NUGENT, internationally bestselling author of Strange Sally Diamond and Little Cruelties
“A superb masterpiece. A Death at the Party brilliantly unfolds over the course of a single day, featuring a deliciously imperfect protagonist untwining her past as she prepares for the party of her life. Stuart's crisp writing and tightly paced plot made me hold my breath from the first line to the last. . . . This is an absolutely stand-out book by a phenomenal talent.”
— SAMANTHA M. BAILEY, #1 bestselling author of Watch Out for Her and Woman on the Edge
“What a mad delight this book is—so seductive and twisted. Highly recommended!”
— SHARI LAPENA, New York Times bestselling author of Not a Happy Family
“This is Stuart’s fourth novel, and it marks a definite talent. This one should be on the best book lists for the year.”
— The Globe and Mail
