***A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** A New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice"
Entertainment Weekly -- Thriller Round-Up
The Wall Street Journal -- 5 Killer Books for 2016
Megan Miranda is the New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls, The Perfect Stranger, The Last House Guest, which was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, The Girl from Widow Hills, Such a Quiet Place, The Last to Vanish, and The Only Survivors. She has also written several books for young adults. She grew up in New Jersey, graduated from MIT, and lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. Follow @MeganLMiranda on Twitter and Instagram, @AuthorMeganMiranda on Facebook, or visit MeganMiranda.com.
"This thriller's all of your fav page-turners (think: Luckiest Girl Alive, The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl) rolled into one."
--theSkimm "Both [Gillian] Flynn's and Miranda's main characters also reclaim the right of female characters to be more than victim or femme fatale... All the Missing Girls is set to become one of the best books of 2016."
-- Los Angeles Review of Books "Extremely interesting...a novel that will probably be called Hitchcockian."
--The New York Times Book Review "Are you paying attention? You'll need to be; this thriller will test your brain with its reverse chronological structure, and it's a page-turner to boot."
-- ELLE "Intricately plotted...Ms. Miranda brings heightened suspense and a twist to this familiar scenario by telling the story, which unfolds over 15 days, in reverse chronological order."
-- The New York Times "Fast-paced and frightening, All the Missing Girls will teach you why it's dangerous to go into the woods alone at night."
-- Refinery29 "All the Missing Girls is the archetypal murder mystery, the kind it seems like everyone has been hungry for since Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and Paula Hawkins's Girl on a Train."
-- Cosmopolitan.com "A new spin on a classic "missing person" thriller, All the Missing Girls is the perfect read for thriller fans."
-- Bustle.com "In All the Missing Girls Megan Miranda leads readers back through the past of a small southern town, enfolding them in a slow, tense nightmare of suspicion, menace, and tangled motives. A twisty, compulsive read--I loved it."
-- Ruth Ware, author of IN A DARK, DARK WOOD "Fiendishly plotted...Miranda convincingly conjures a haunted setting that serves as a character in its own right, but what really makes this roller-coaster so memorable is her inspired use of reverse chronology, so that each chapter steps further back in time, dramatically shifting the reader's perspective."
-- Publishers Weekly, starred review "As original as it is addictive, this story puts a knot in your gut from the opening pages. Then, through the wizardry of its unconventional structure, that knot tightens and tightens and will not let go until the final pages--and even then the story continues to haunt you. Vividly rendered, psychologically complex, and narratively acrobatic, All The Missing Girls is, above all, totally gripping."
-- Tim Johnston, New York Times bestselling author of DESCENT "Darkly nostalgic....Miranda takes a risk by telling the story backward, but it pays off with an undroppable thriller, plenty of romantic suspense, and a fresh take on the decades-old teenage-murder theme."
-- Booklist "All the Missing Girls is a smart, suspenseful, and emotionally complex thriller. Told in reverse, this story will make you want to lock the doors, turn off the phone, and read until the last satisfying page."
-- Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of THE EX "Megan Miranda's utterly gripping and original All the Missing Girls keeps you off balance in the most perfect way. I was held hostage by the book from the first page to the stunning conclusion. This literally backward tale is a winner."
-- Lisa Lutz, author of THE PASSENGER and HOW TO START A FIRE
"This thriller's all of your fav page-turners (think:
Day 1 DAY 1 I took inventory of the apartment one last time before loading up my car: suitcases waiting beside the door; key in an envelope on the kitchen counter; an open box half full of the last-minute things I''d packed up the night before. I could see every angle of the apartment from the galley kitchen--exposed and empty--but still, I had the lingering feeling that I was forgetting something. I''d gotten everything together in a rush, finishing out the last few weeks of the school year while fielding calls from Daniel and finding someone to sublet my place for the summer--no time to pause, to take in the fact that I was actually doing this. Going back. Going there. Daniel didn''t know about the letter. He knew only that I was coming to help, that I had two months before I needed to return to my life here. Now the apartment was practically bare. An industrial box, stripped of all warmth, awaiting the moderately responsible-looking grad student who would be staying through August. I''d left him the dishes, because they were a pain to pack. I''d left him the futon, because he''d asked, and because he threw in an extra fifty dollars. The rest of it--the things that wouldn''t fit in my car, at least--was in a storage unit a few blocks away. My entire life in a sealed rectangular cube, stacked full of painted furniture and winter clothes. The sound of someone knocking echoed off the empty walls, made me jump. The new tenant wasn''t due to arrive for another few hours, when I''d be on the road. It was way too early for anyone else. I crossed the narrow room and opened the front door. "Surprise," Everett said. "I was hoping to catch you before you left." He was dressed for work--clean and sleek--and he bent down to kiss me, one arm tucked behind his back. He smelled like coffee and toothpaste; starch and leather; professionalism and efficiency. He pulled a steaming Styrofoam cup from behind his back. "Brought you this. For the road." I inhaled deeply. "The way to my heart." I leaned against the counter, took a deep sip. He checked his watch and winced. "I hate to do this, but I have to run. Early meeting on the other side of town." We met halfway for one last kiss. I grabbed his elbow as he pulled away. "Thank you," I said. He rested his forehead against mine. "It''ll go fast. You''ll see." I watched him go--his steps crisp and measured, his dark hair brushing his collar--until he reached the elevator at the end of the hall. He turned back just as the doors slid open. I leaned against the doorframe, and he smiled. "Drive safe, Nicolette." I let the door fall shut, and the reality of the day suddenly made my limbs heavy, my fingertips tingle. The red numbers on the microwave clock ticked forward, and I cringed. It''s a nine-hour drive from Philadelphia to Cooley Ridge, not counting traffic, lunch break, gas and restroom stops, depending. And since I was leaving twenty minutes after I said I would, I could already picture Daniel sitting on the front porch, tapping his foot, as I pulled into the unpaved driveway. I sent him a text as I propped the front door open with a suitcase: On my way, but more like 3:30. It took two trips to drag the luggage and remaining boxes down to the car, which was parked around the block, behind the building. I heard the beginnings of rush-hour traffic in the distance, a steady hum on the highway, the occasional honk. A familiar harmony. I started the car, waited for the air to kick in. Okay, okay, I thought. I rested my phone in the cup holder and saw a response from Daniel: Dad''s expecting you for dinner. Don''t miss it. Like I might be three hours later than I''d claimed. That was one of Daniel''s more impressive accomplishments: He had perfected the art of the passive-aggressive text message. He''d been practicing for years. WHEN I WAS YOUNGER, I used to believe I could see the future. This was probably my father''s fault, filling my childhood with platitudes from his philosophy lectures, letting me believe in things that could not be. I''d close my eyes and will it to appear, in tiny, beautiful glimpses. I''d see Daniel in a cap and gown. My mother smiling beside him through the lens of my camera as I motioned for them to get closer. Put your arm around her. Pretend you like each other! Perfect. I''d see me and Tyler, years later, throwing our bags into the back of his mud-stained pickup truck, leaving for college. Leaving for good. It was impossible to understand back then that getting out wouldn''t be an event in a pickup truck but a ten-year process of excision. Miles and years, slowly padding the distance. Not to mention Tyler never left Cooley Ridge. Daniel never graduated. And our mother wouldn''t have lived to see it, anyway. If my life were a ladder, then Cooley Ridge was the bottom--an unassuming town tucked into the edge of the Smoky Mountains, the very definition of Small Town, America, but without the charm. Everywhere else--anywhere else--was a higher rung that I''d reach steadily with time. College two hundred miles to the east, grad school one state north, an internship in a city where I planted my feet and refused to leave. An apartment in my own name and a nameplate on my own desk and Cooley Ridge, always the thing I was moving farther away from. But here''s the thing I''ve learned about leaving--you can''t really go back. I don''t know what to do with Cooley Ridge anymore, and Cooley Ridge doesn''t know what to do with me, either. The distance only increases with the years. Most times, if I tried to shift it back into focus-- Tell me about home, tell me about growing up, tell me about your family, Everett would say--all I''d see was a caricature of it in my mind: a miniature town set up on entryway tables around the holidays, everything frozen in time. So I gave him surface answers, flat and nonspecific: My mom died when I was sixteen; it''s a small town at the edge of the forest; I have an older brother. Even to me, even as I answered, it looked like nothing. A Polaroid fading from the edges in, the colors bled out; the outline of a ghost town full of ghosts. But one call from Daniel--"We have to sell the house"--and I felt the give of the floorboards beneath my feet. "I''m coming home," I said, and the edges rippled, the colors burned: My mother pressed her cheek against my forehead; Corinne rocked our cart gently back and forth at the top of the Ferris wheel; Tyler balanced on the fallen tree angled across the river, stretching between us. That girl, my dad wrote, and her laughter rattled my heart. I NEED TO TALK to you. That girl. I saw that girl. An hour later, a moment later, and he''d probably forgotten--setting aside the sealed envelope until someone found it abandoned on his dresser or under his pillow and pulled my address from his file. But there must''ve been a trigger. A memory. An idea lost in the synapses of his brain; the firing of a thought with nowhere else to go. The torn page, the slanted print, my name on the envelope-- And now something sharp and wild had been set loose inside my head. Her name, bouncing around like an echo. Corinne Prescott. Dad''s letter had been folded up inside my purse for the last few weeks, lingering just under the surface of my mind. I''d be reaching for my wallet or the car keys and feel a sliver of the edge, the jab of the corner, and there she would be all over again: long bronze hair falling over her shoulders, the scent of spearmint gum, her whisper in my ear. That girl. She was always that girl. What other girl could it be? The last time I''d driven home was a little over a year ago--when Daniel called and said we had to get Dad into a facility, and I couldn''t justify the cost of a last-minute flight. It had rained almost the entire trip, both ways. Today, on the other hand, was the perfect driving day. No rain, overcast but not dark. Light but not bright. I''d made it through three states without stopping, towns and exits blurring by as I sped past--the embodiment of everything I loved about living up north. I loved the pace, how you could fill the day with a to-do list, take charge of the hours and bend them to your will. And the impatience of the clerk inside the convenience store on the corner near my apartment, the way he never looked up from his crossword, never made eye contact. I loved the anonymity of it all. Of a sidewalk full of strangers and endless possibilities. Driving through these states was like that, too. But the beginning of the drive always goes much faster than the end. Farther south, the exits grow sparser, the landscape just sameness, filled with things you''re sure you''ve passed a thousand times. I was somewhere in Virginia when my phone rang from its spot in the cup holder. I fumbled for the hands-free device in my purse, keeping one hand steady on the wheel, but eventually gave up and hit speaker to answer the call. "Hello?" I called. "Hey, can you hear me?" Everett''s voice crackled, and I wasn''t sure if it was the speakerphone or the reception. "Yes, what''s up?" He said something indecipherable, his words cutting in and out. "Sorry, you''re breaking up. What?" I was practically shouting. "Grabbing a quick bite," he said through the static. "Just checking in. How are the tires holding up this time?" I hea
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