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A Novel
by Riley Sager
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.
"Bestseller Sager expertly doles out chills and pathos in his mesmerizing latest…This standout work of psychological suspense confirms that Sager has few equals when it comes to merging creepiness and compassion." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Full of tension, urgency, atmosphere, and feeling—this is Riley Sager at his very best." —Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"I've read all of Riley Sager's novels and Middle of the Night is my new favorite. It's a sweet-and-spooky story about an unsolved mystery, childhood friendships, and things that go bump in the night—with plenty of 90s nostalgia and a twist I never saw coming. Read it outdoors with a flashlight on a warm summer's evening—if you dare!" —Jason Rekulak, bestselling author of Hidden Pictures
"Middle of the Night is Riley Sager at his masterful best—this story is dark, scary, and twisty, but also bittersweet. It's the secrets that hide in a bucolic neighborhood on a summer night, lingering in the freshly cut grass and the sound of crickets. You will follow these fascinating characters through its brilliantly woven plot all the way to the unexpected, poignant end." —Simone St. James, New York Times bestselling author of Murder Road
This information about Middle of the Night was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Riley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, most recently The House Across the Lake and The Only One Left. A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
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