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The Lying Game

A Novel

ebook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 4 weeks
Praise for Ruth Ware's instant New York Times, USA TODAY, and Los Angeles Times bestseller:

"So many questions....Until the very last page! Needless to say, I could not put this book down!" —Reese Witherspoon

"Once again the author of The Woman in Cabin 10 delivers mega-chills." —People

"Missing Big Little Lies? Dig into this psychological thriller about whether you can really trust your nearest and dearest." —Cosmopolitan

From the instant New York Times bestselling author of blockbuster thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10 comes a chilling new novel of friendship, secrets, and the dangerous games teenaged girls play.
On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten, along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve what first appears to be a wayward stick, but to her horror, turns out to be something much more sinister...

The next morning, three women in and around London—Fatima, Thea, and Isa—receive the text they had always hoped would never come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, "I need you."

The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second-rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty. But their little game had consequences, and as the four converge in present-day Salten, they realize their shared past was not as safely buried as they had once hoped...

Atmospheric, twisty, and with just the right amount of chill to keep you wrong-footed, The Lying Game is told in Ruth Ware's signature suspenseful style, lending itself to becoming another unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 22, 2017
      When Isa Wilde, the narrator of this engrossing psychological thriller from bestseller Ware (The Woman in Cabin 10), gets a text—“I need you”—from old friend Kate Atagon, she knows she must drop everything in London and go to Salten, a town on England’s south coast, where the two attended Salten House, a cut-rate boarding school. Doctor Fatima Qureshy and casino dealer Thea West, who also attended Salten House, receive the same message. At school, the four girls perfected what they called the Lying Game, with myriad rules and intricate scoring. An incident that caused the girls to leave before their senior year looms large as Isa, Fatima, and Thea gather at the house where Kate has always lived with her father, Salten’s art master. Kate informs the group about a riverbank discovery—a human bone—that could unravel the foursome’s 17-year pact of silence. Alternating between the past and present, Ware builds up a rock-solid cast of intriguing characters and spins a mystery that will keep readers turning pages to the end. Agent: Eve White, Eve White Literary Agency (U.K.).

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from May 15, 2017
      Suspense queen Ware's (The Woman in Cabin 10, 2016, etc.) third novel in three years introduces four women who have been carrying a terrible secret since their boarding school days, a secret that is about to be literally unearthed.Isa Wilde, happy in her life as a new mother, receives a text one morning that simply reads, I need you, and hours later, she boards a train bound for the coastal village of Salten with her infant daughter in tow. She has come at her friend Kate's summons, and soon they are joined by two other women who received the same text, Thea and Fatima. Fifteen years earlier, all four were best friends at Salten House, sneaking off campus on the weekends to spend time with Kate's father, an art teacher, and her handsome, mysterious brother, Luc. Their school days ended in tragedy and scandal, however, and the four haven't been back to Salten since they were expelled. Now, a bone has been found in the marshes, and Kate has called the others back in a panic. They know more about the body than they should, but even they don't know the truth. Ware's third outing is just as full of psychological suspense as her earlier books, but there is a quietness about this one, a slower unraveling of tension and fear, that elevates it above her others. Though there's still a fair dash of drama, it doesn't veer into the realm of melodrama, developing consistently with the characters and with their personalities and pasts. Isa is a sympathetic narrative voice though her obsession with the concerns of new parenthood may put some readers off. Cancel your plans for the weekend when you sit down with this book, because you won't want to move until it's over.

      COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from June 1, 2017
      The text I need you demolishes the careful distance Isa Wilde has placed between her life as a happily married new mother and the painful, life-changing term she spent at Salten House boarding school. Long-estranged friends Isa, Thea, and Fatima answer Kate Atagon's text by returning to Salten, where Kate still lives in her father's decomposing millhouse. Ambrose Atagon, a well-known artist, was Salten's art teacher and frequent host of the girls' away weekends. He disappeared that final year amid rumors of inappropriate relationships with the girls, leaving the four friends with a disastrous secret. Now a body has been found in the marsh surrounding the house, and the women need to get their stories straight before the inevitable knock at the door. Once they are together, though, the years of distance and memories of their deceptive pastime, the Lying Game, breed suspicion. Ware masterfully harnesses the millhouse's decrepit menace to create a slow-rising sense of foreboding, darkening Isa's recollections of the weeks leading to Ambrose's disappearance. Previous blockbusters (including The Woman in Cabin 10, 2016) guarantee popularity for Ware's latest thriller, and, with arguably her most complex, fully realized characters yet, this one may become her biggest hit yet.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

    • Library Journal

      June 15, 2017

      Four women, friends since their teen years spent at a boarding school on the English Channel, are thrown together again after nearly 20 years when a body surfaces in the marsh, threatening to destroy all of their carefully constructed lives--and lies. Narrator Isa, a new mom on maternity leave, joins Fatima, a no-nonsense physician who recently reconnected with her Muslim faith; Thea, a beauty who struggles with addiction; and Kate, a troubled artist who never left the small coastal town and lives in a rickety old mill house that's slowly sinking into the surrounding lands. As adolescents, the girls spent many long weekends at the mill house with Ambrose, Kate's artist father, and Luc, her stepbrother. At school, they smoked, drank, snuck out of the dorms at night, and played "the lying game," an ongoing competition to see who could convince their peers and teachers to believe the most outlandish tales. Unlike In a Dark, Dark Wood or The Woman in Cabin 10, Ware's third novel has a more leisurely pacing and values character development over nail-biting suspense. The mystery unfolds slowly and the "big reveal" is likely to be guessed at by observant readers. VERDICT Though not as chill-inducing as her previous titles, Ware's latest offers nuanced characters, an atmospheric small-town British setting, and a satisfying mystery. [See Prepub Alert, 1/23/17.]--Kiera Parrott, School Library Journal.

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Library Journal

      February 15, 2017

      Ware handily established herself with two especially intense novels, In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10, both New York Times best sellers and LibraryReads picks. Her third novel features Isa Wilde, who's walking along a tidal estuary in the little town of Salten when her dog leaps into the waves and retrieves a human bone. The resultant trauma undoes the personal history of Isa and her friends, who gather to reassure her. Big demand already.

      Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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