Amber Glass has spent her entire adult life putting as much distance as possible between her and her hometown of Baltimore, where she fears she will forever be known as
“Prom Mom”—the girl who allegedly killed her baby on the night of the prom after her date, Joe Simpson, abandoned her to pursue the girl he really liked. But when circumstances bring Amber back to the city, she realizes she can have a second chance—as long as she stays away from Joe, now a successful commercial real estate developer, married to a plastic surgeon, Meredith, to whom he is devoted.
The problem is, Amber can’t stay away from Joe. And Joe finds that it’s increasingly hard for him to ignore Amber, if only because she remembers the boy he was and the man he said he was going to be. Against the surreal backdrop of 2020 and early 2021, the two are slowly drawn to each other and eventually cross the line they’ve been trying not to cross.
And then Joe asks Amber to help him do the unthinkable…
Since Laura Lippman's debut in 1997, she has been recognized as a distinctive voice in mystery fiction and named one of the "essential" crime writers of the last 100 years. In 2022, Lippman celebrated her silver anniversary as a published author. In that time, she has produced 24 novels, 2 collections of short stories, a serialized novella, a book of essays, and a children's picture book. Her work has been published in more than 25 languages.
A New York Times bestseller, she has won more than 20 prizes for her work and been shortlisted for 30 more. Her 2019 novel, Lady in the Lake, is being adapted into a miniseries starring Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram. Lippman lives in Baltimore and New Orleans.
