The Murderer's Daughters

This novel from a national bestseller "dives fearlessly into a tense and emotional story of two sisters anchored to one irreversible act of domestic violence" (The Miami Herald).

Lulu and Merry's childhood was never ideal, but on the day before Lulu's tenth birthday their father propels them into a nightmare. Lulu had been warned not let her estranged father in their apartment, but when he shows up drunk, he bullies his way past Lulu, who then listens in horror as her parents struggle. She runs for help, but discovers upon her return that he's murdered her mother, stabbed her five-year-old sister, Merry, and tried, unsuccessfully, to kill himself.


Lulu and Merry are effectively orphaned by their mother's death and father's imprisonment. The girls' relatives abandon them to a terrifying group home. They come to learn they'll never really belong anywhere or to anyone—that all they have to hold onto is each other.


For thirty years, the sisters try to make sense of what happened. Their imprisoned father is a specter in both their lives, shadowing every choice they make. One spends her life pretending he's dead, while the other feels compelled—by fear, by duty—to keep him close. Both dread the day his attempts to win parole may meet with success.


Compulsively readable, The Murderer's Daughters is a testament to the family ties that bind us together and tear us apart.


"All too believable and heartbreaking." —LA Times, 'Knock-Out Debuts'


"An impressively executed novel, disturbing and convincing." —Boston Globe

"Much like Janet Fitch's White Oleander or Jacquelyn Mitchard's The Deep End of the Ocean, [Meyers's] takes readers on an emotional roller-coaster ride." —Library Journal