The Never List
A Novel
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4.5 • 10 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
An international bestseller from the most relentless, deeply disturbing thriller writer since Jeffery Deaver and Gillian Flynn
For years, best friends Sarah and Jennifer kept what they called the “Never List”: a list of actions to be avoided, for safety’s sake, at all costs. But one night, against their best instincts, they accept a cab ride with grave, everlasting consequences. For the next three years, they are held captive with two other girls in a dungeon-like cellar by a connoisseur of sadism.
Ten years later, at thirty-one, Sarah is still struggling to resume a normal life, living as a virtual recluse under a new name, unable to come to grips with the fact that Jennifer didn’t make it out of that cellar. Now, her abductor is up for parole and Sarah can no longer ignore the twisted letters he sends from jail.
Finally, Sarah decides to confront her phobias and the other survivors—who hold their own deep grudges against her. When she goes on a cross-country chase that takes her into the perverse world of BDSM, secret cults, and the arcane study of torture, she begins unraveling a mystery more horrifying than even she could have imagined.
A shocking, blazingly fast read, Koethi Zan’s debut is a must for fans of Karin Slaughter, Laura Lippman, and S.J. Watson.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Less could have been more in Zan's riveting but flawed debut, a psychological thriller. A decade after Sarah Farber helped convict Jack Derber, a University of Oregon psychology professor, for keeping her, along with her best friend Jennifer and two other college-age girls, shackled and naked in the cellar of a remote cabin for almost three years, in between bouts of torture, Sarah leads a hermetic existence as an accountant with a new identity in New York City. Meanwhile, Derber manages to send creepy letters to Sarah and his other former captives via the FBI while imprisoned. With Derber's first parole hearing looming, Sarah resolves to fly cross-country and attempt to follow the clues in these missives to find evidence that might put the sadist away for good. As Sarah and the other three victims probe Derber's ties to a cultlike church that his wife attends, Zan delivers harrowing, if often far-fetched, and not for the faint-hearted, action. 5-city author tour.
Customer Reviews
The Never List
Gripping. Taut, well crafted--a page turner. Zan is a revelation, weaving sympathetic and evil characters through a suspenseful narrative. Have vowed never to visit the Pacific Northwest. A real treat for anyone looking for that next twisted-laden, "wow, didn't see that coming", page turner.