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Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Novel
If you're on the list, someone wants you dead.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Eight Perfect Murders comes the heart-pounding story of nine strangers who receive a cryptic list with their names on it—and then begin to die in highly unusual circumstances.
Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke—until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list.
First, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine. Then, a father is shot in the back while running through his quiet neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor, and they're located all over the country. So why are they all on the list, and who sent it?
FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman? As the mysterious sender stalks these nine strangers, they find themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering who will be crossed off next…
"Swanson again takes the idea of fiction as homage to deliriously vertiginous new heights… While the tension mounts deliciously as we wonder if there will be any survivors, the real fascination here is the explanation itself—and what it reveals about the cancerous effects of guilt and obsession." —Booklist (starred review)
"Swanson (Every Vow You Break) neatly riffs on Agatha Christie's classic And Then There Were None in this taut thriller… [A] well-crafted page-turner." —Publishers Weekly
"Swanson honors genre traditions by arousing expectations only to subvert them—and then subvert them again. Some of the surprises are so unexpected, readers may be doing mental backflips to keep up. The author of Nine Lives has surpassed his own high standards." —Wall Street Journal
"I loved Nine Lives. Swanson's sharp and insightful characterization brought to life a fascinating premise. The whole resolution is beautifully worked out." —Ann Cleeves, author of The Heron's Cry
"With economical strokes of his pen, Peter Swanson presents us with a clever homage to the Golden Age of Mystery and keeps us guessing right to the end." —Peter May, author of The Blackhouse
This information about Nine Lives 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.
Photo: Jim Ferguson
Peter Swanson is the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing, winner of the New England Society Book Award and finalist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; Her Every Fear, an NPR book of the year; and Eight Perfect Murders, a New York Times bestseller, among others. His books have been translated into 30 languages. He lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts, where he is at work on his next novel.
If you liked Nine Lives, try these:
by Heather Young
Published 2021
A young boy finds himself at the center of a murder mystery in this timely and twisty thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Lost Girls - a compelling and indelible story set in small town America that examines the burden of guilt, the bitter price of forgiveness, and the debts we owe our dead, both recent and distant.
by Peter Swanson
Published 2021
From the hugely talented author of Before She Knew Him comes a chilling tale of psychological suspense and an homage to the thriller genre tailor-made for fans: the story of a bookseller who finds himself at the center of an FBI investigation because a very clever killer has started using his list of fiction's most ingenious murders.
by Tana French
Published 2015
The sensational new novel from "one of the most talented crime writers alive" (The Washington Post)
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