One Night
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
One night. That’s all the time a family has to decide what to do with the man they believe murdered their daughter: Do they forgive him, or do they take justice into their own hands?
“One Night is a locked-room stunner that unfolds at breakneck speed.”—Kimberly Belle, USA Today bestselling author of The Personal Assistant
The anonymous letters arrive in the mail, one by one: To find out what really happened to Meg, meet at this location. Don’t tell anyone you’re coming. In one night, you’ll find out everything you need to know.
Ten years after her murder, the letters tell Meghan’s family exactly when and where to meet: a cliffside home on the Oregon coast. But on the night they’re promised answers, the convicted killer—her high school boyfriend, Cal, who spent only ten years in prison for murder—is found unconscious in his car after it slammed into a tree near the house where the family is sitting and waiting. Is he really the one who invited them to gather?
As a storm rampages along the Pacific Northwest, the power cuts off and leaves the family with no chance of returning to the main road and finding help. So they drag Cal back to the house for the remainder of the night. How easy it would be to let him die and claim it was an accident. Or do they help him instead? As the hours tick by, it becomes an excruciating choice. Half of the family wants to kill him. The other half wants him to regain consciousness so he can tell them what he knows.
But if Cal wakes up, he might reveal that someone in the family knows more than they’re letting on. And if that’s the case, who is the real killer? And are they already in the house?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A dysfunctional family confronts old wounds in this slack psychological thriller from Cross (Nanny Needed). Ten years ago, Meghan, the beloved oldest daughter of Maureen and Paul Chisholm, was murdered days before her high school prom. Her boyfriend at the time, Cal Hereford, was convicted of the crime, though he's maintained his innocence. Now, Cal has been released from prison and Maureen and Paul have divorced. Paul has a new wife, while Maureen continues to obsess about her late daughter, who—even in death—overshadows her sisters Alice and Samantha. One afternoon, each member of the family receives a mysterious invitation to a secluded house on the Oregon coast: "Don't tell anyone you're coming," it reads. "In one night, you'll find out what happened to Meg." The guests arrive to find the dining table set with place cards before a raging storm knocks out cellphone service and traps everyone inside. Allegiances crumble and accusations fly as the guests try to figure out who summoned them in the first place. Unfortunately, Cross fails to follow through on the promising setup, and instead serves up cardboard characters and predictable plot twists. Readers seeking a spine-tingling locked-room mystery will be dissatisfied.
