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A Novel
by Ashley Audrain
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Push, a propulsive page-turner about four families whose lives are changed when the unthinkable happens—and what is lost when we give in to our own worst impulses.
On Harlow Street, the well-to-do neighborhood couples and their children gather for a catered barbecue as the summer winds down; drinks continue late into the night.
Everything is fabulous until the picture-perfect hostess explodes in fury because her son disobeys her. Everyone at the party hears her exquisite veneer crack—loud and clear. Before long, that same young boy falls from his bedside window in the middle of the night. And then, his mother can only sit by her son's hospital bed, where she refuses to speak to anyone, and his life hangs in the balance.
What happens next, over the course of a tense three days, as each of these women grapple with what led to that terrible night?
Exploring envy, women's friendships, desire, and the intuitions that we silence, The Whispers is a chilling novel that marks Audrain as a major women's fiction talent.
"Audrain takes a deep dive into the secret lives of women in this standout work of literary suspense...The novel soars via Audrain's clever revelations of the ways her protagonists' lives are linked in ways they never suspected. Both artful and pulse pounding, this isn't easily shaken." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"In The Whispers Ashley Audrain explores the combustibility of secrets and rage among mothers in a small community… expertly, subtly and powerfully rendered….[and] she delivers a sucker-punch ending you'll have to read twice to believe." —The New York Times Book Review
"Audrain delves into the minds of women entering midlife who must now face the choices they made as well as their own complicity in shaming those who prioritize something different for themselves." —The Washington Post
"Enticing, nuanced, and unflinching, The Whispers opens a secret portal into the private lives of women in suburbia." —Nita Prose, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Maid
"No one understands the secret lives of women like Ashley Audrain. In her electrifying new novel, The Whispers, the unspoken fears, desires, and shame of four neighbors threaten the lives they've so carefully constructed. It's a razor-sharp page-turner. Masterful!" —Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After
This information about The Whispers 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.
Ashley Audrain'sdebut novel, The Push, was an instant New York Times bestseller. She previously served as the publicity director of Penguin Books Canada, and prior to that, worked in public relations. She lives in Toronto, where she and her partner are raising their two young children. The Whispers is her second novel.
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