Middle of the Night

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 Billy fell asleep together in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in the quiet New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. The tent was sliced open, and Billy was gone.

He was never seen again.

Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home, but plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone is roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy's presence keep appearing in his backyard.

Ethan is forced to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that leads him into the quiet woods surrounding Hemlock Circle, where a mysterious institute enacts secretive research on a crumbling estate.

The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realises that no place, even the quietest of suburban streets, is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.

'Propulsive . . . a dizzying Gothic whodunit' New York Times Book Review

'Riley Sager is an auto-buy for me' Laura Dave

'Riley Sager is one of my favourite authors . . . Fun, scary and so absorbing' Rachel Hawkins

'If you're not already reading Riley Sager, you're missing out' Catherine Ryan Howard

'Clever, twisty, spine-chilling' Ruth Ware

'A dark, frightening and twisty story that you won't be able to put down' Shari Lapena

'The House Across the Lake is the work of a master storyteller . . . An unputdownable page-turner' Alex Michaelides

'Brilliantly written with a dark and clever twist on a well-worn trope, and as for that ending...?!' Susi Holliday