El Dorado Drive
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4.1 • 33 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Named A Best Mystery/Thriller of 2025 by Elle and Crime Reads • An NPR 2025 Book We Love • A Best Book of 2025 by Library Journal
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Turnout comes a simmering, atmospheric novel of friendship and betrayal, following a women-led pyramid scheme in suburban Detroit.
"Abbott is a superstar of the suspense genre." —NPR
All I want is to be innocent again. But that's not how it works. Especially not after the Wheel.
The three Bishop sisters grew up in privilege in the moneyed suburbs of Detroit. But as the auto industry declined, so did their fortunes. Harper, the youngest, is barely making ends meet when her beloved, charismatic sister Pam—currently in the middle of a contentious battle with her ex-husband—and her eldest sister, Debra, approach her about joining an exciting new club.
The Wheel offers women like themselves—middle-aged and of declining means—a way to make their own money, independent of husbands or families. Quickly, however, the Wheel’s success, and their own addiction to it, leads to greater and greater risks—and a crime so shocking it threatens to bring everything down with it.
Megan Abbott turns her keen eye toward women and money in El Dorado Drive, a riveting story about power, vulnerability, and how desperation draws out our most destructive impulses.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cash-strapped women fall prey to a pyramid scheme in this nerve-shredding thriller from Edgar winner Abbott (Beware the Woman). Harper Bishop flees Grosse Pointe, Mich., in June 2008 to evade an increasingly persistent creditor, leaving behind her two older sisters, who are also deeply in debt—Debra due to her husband's medical bills, Pam because of her divorce from a thieving deadbeat. When Harper returns home in October, she's shocked to find Debra sporting "meticulous highlights" and Pam driving a Lexus. The duo attribute their windfalls to the Wheel, an all-female "circle of giving" that requires new members to contribute initial dues of five grand. Her siblings' enthusiasm is so contagious that Harper sets aside her misgivings and signs on, unwittingly sealing all their fates. Though the tale unfolds from Harper's POV, and her fraught relationships are its focus, the most fully realized cast member is Pam's daughter, Vivian, a surly teen whose resentment of her mother animates the proceedings. Elsewhere, Abbott probes the minefield of sisterhood to harrowing effect, using staccato prose to amplify the inherent apprehension and anxiety of the siblings' relationships. The result is a tense and twisty delight.
