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As wealthy urban weekenders pour into a small town in upstate New York, tensions rise. Husband and wife Maddie and Paul and their three children find their peaceful lives up-ended by new pressures and old secrets. This ambitious debut novel is pudgy with subplots, peripheral characters and nontelling details, but it's redeemed by the presence of one sharply drawn character, enigmatic Manhattanite Anne. Anne sweeps into town like a perfumed breeze, acting like strange alchemy on long-established relationships. Is she simply marvelous or wholly mad? This is a character study, not a mystery, but watching this woman unfold, or unravel, is highly suspenseful. Everyone has met someone like Anne, and that's part of what helps this uneven tale succeed.

PAMELA MILLER, NIGHT metro editor

Near the end of this book, one of the characters says, "It's a colorful town you've got here." That's an understatement. I might say that Coventry, the small town in northern California where this thriller takes place, is peopled with a pack of downright weirdos. In fact, I would go so far as to say the whole book is weird -- absorbing, interesting, entertaining and well-written, but weird. O'Connell, author of nine novels featuring Kathy Mallory, weaves a tale of two brothers, Oren and Josh Hobbs. Josh disappeared as a teenager, and his brother goes on to become an investigator in the Army. When Josh's bones begin appearing one by one on their father's front steps, mysterious housekeeper Hannah Rice lures Oren home to investigate the mystery of the boy's disappearance. There are suspects galore: The hotelkeeper, with whom Oren had an affair as a teenager; the librarian, who rarely bathes and never leaves the library; the attorney, who keeps his alcoholic wife in a virtual birdhouse and is oddly present at every turn. Then there is Oren's love interest, Isabelle, who throughout the book physically attacks him, eventually aiming her car at him and trying to run him down. The writing is wonderfully descriptive, as in this passage describing Isabelle's anger: "She sat on the edge of the chair cushion, though not perched there, nothing like a bird but something rather more dangerous. How contrary was this quiet bomb exploding slowly. She continued to smile at him, but she did not breathe -- she seethed." You won't believe the ending. It's weird -- but satisfying.