Middle of the Night
A Novel
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4.2 • 357 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.
The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul-de-sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.
Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul-de-sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?
The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed ghosts roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.
The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Sager (The Only One Left) expertly doles out chills and pathos in his mesmerizing latest. In 1994, when Ethan Marsh was 10 years old, his best friend, Billy Barringer, was kidnapped from the tent where both boys were sleeping in Ethan's New Jersey backyard and never seen again. Thirty years later, Ethan's marriage has ended, his parents have decamped to Florida, and he's returned to live on the well-to-do cul-de-sac where he grew up. Still plagued by nightmares about Billy's disappearance, Ethan comes to believe that someone may be lurking in the shadows of Hemlock Circle: neighbors' motion-sensor lights flick on for no apparent reason; he senses a presence "linger in the way certain smells do" when he's out for night walks. His paranoia increases when someone tosses a baseball into his yard, the private signal Billy used to give him when he wanted to play. Could Billy have returned? Or is his kidnapper back for seconds? Sager takes his time ratcheting up the tension, peppering in crucial flashbacks that flesh out Ethan and Billy's friendship and painting a three-dimensional portrait of Ethan's fractured mind in the present. This standout work of psychological suspense confirms that Sager has few equals when it comes to merging creepiness and compassion.
Customer Reviews
Good ending
Not his most interesting book but the end was worth it
A very slow burn without an earned ending, still interesting.
I think this book is great if people enjoy a murder mystery with a very, VERY, vague sense of the supernatural. I came into this book wanting something scary, and supernatural. When I didn’t get that j stayed for the mystery, and the 90s nostalgia (although I don’t feel like it ever achieved the actual feel of the decade). A good book but wish it had more of the supernatural- whether it be ghosts or occult- within the story.
Love love love it!
The twists and turns - great by themselves but it also took me back to my backyard … and a tent…
and my best friend!Thank you!