The Family Plot: A Novel

About this book

Exceedingly entertaining. The New York Times From the author of The Winter Sister and Behind the Red Door a family obsessed with true crime gathers to bury their patriarchonly to find another body already in his grave. Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents Dahlia Lighthouse is unable to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother Andy when they were sixteen. After several years away and following her fathers death Dahlia returns to the house where the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their fathers plot is another bodyAndys his skull split open with an ax. Dahlia is quick to blame Andys murder on the serial killer who terrorized the island for decades while the rest of her family reacts to the revelation in unsettling ways. Her brother Charlie pours his energy into creating a family memorial museum highlighting their research into the lives of famous murder victims; her sister Tate forges ahead with her popular dioramas portraying crime scenes; and their mother affects a cheerfully domestic facade becoming unrecognizable as the woman who performed murder reenactments for her children. As Dahlia grapples with her own grief and horror she realizes that her eccentric family and the mansion itself may hold the answers to what happened to her twin.