The Last Good Night
A Novel
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of Best Intentions and Waiting to Surface comes a “taut and disturbing” (The New York Times) psychological thriller about a television news anchor whose idyllic life is shattered when her shadowed past comes back to haunt her.
Laura Barrett has it all—a supportive husband, a beautiful baby daughter, and a career in television that has made her face familiar to millions. But there’s a shadow over Laura’s happiness. And when a man approaches her after she leaves work and calls her “Marta,” Laura knows that what she’s feared for so long has finally arrived. The postcard with the coffin on it confirms that her idyll is over.
Marta was a teenager, growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, when she did something terrible one night in a run-down motel, and she’s been running from it ever since. For twenty years, Laura has been trying to erase Marta from her memory. Now a man from her past is confronting her, demanding answers. At first, Laura thinks she can control the situation. But suddenly, she’s facing every mother’s nightmare: her daughter is kidnapped.
To get her baby back, Laura’s going to have to risk her marriage, her career, and her life, and finally face up to what happened that night so long ago. Gripping and suspenseful, The Last Good Night “ratchets up the tension and fully involves the reader in her heroine’s harrowing ordeal” (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A cautionary tale about trying to build a life on a marsh of secrets and lies, Listfield's fifth novel (after Acts of Love) is a solidly crafted, increasingly suspenseful narrative. At 38, Laura Barrett is living the American dream. Born in Germany to a trampy, teenage mother and later raised in a fleabag motel in Florida with a groping stepfather, she now has a loving husband, an infant daughter and a great new job: she's been tapped by the network execs to become co-anchor of the national evening news. But success exposes Laura's past. Threatened by a former lover who turns up in New York, and by various cryptic messages, she is terrified that certain unsavory facts (she was a teenage prostitute and was involved in a possible murder) may come to light. Neatly juxtaposing the contrasts between Laura's carefully reinvented life and her secret past, Listfield evokes both backgrounds with fidelity. The newsroom scenes are so detailed that readers will understand exactly what it feels like to be in the hot seat when a big story breaks. When her baby is kidnapped and Laura begins to realize that events could put her in the media spotlight, Listfield ratchets up the tension and fully involves the reader in her heroine's 's harrowing ordeal.
