The Sea of Lost Girls: A Novel

by Carol Goodman

Overview

Winner of the Mary Higgins Clark Award

In the tradition of Daphne du Maurier, Shari Lapena, and Michelle Richmond comes a new thriller from the bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages—a twisty, harrowing story set at a prestigious prep school in which one woman’s carefully hidden past might destroy her future.

Tess has worked hard to keep her past buried, where it belongs. Now she’s the wife to a respected professor at an elite boarding school, where she also teaches. Her seventeen-year-old son, Rudy, whose dark moods and complicated behavior she’s long worried about, seems to be thriving: he has a lead role in the school play and a smart and ambitious girlfriend. Tess tries not to think about the mistakes she made eighteen years ago, and mostly, she succeeds.

And then one more morning she gets a text at 2:50 AM: it’s Rudy, asking for help. When Tess picks him up she finds him drenched and shivering, with a dark stain on his sweatshirt. Four hours later, Tess gets a phone call from the Haywood school headmistress: Lila Zeller, Rudy’s girlfriend, has been found dead on the beach, not far from where Tess found Rudy just hours before.

As the investigation into Lila’s death escalates, Tess finds her family attacked on all sides. What first seemed like a tragic accidental death is turning into something far more sinister, and not only is Tess’s son a suspect but her husband is a person of interest too. But Lila’s death isn’t the first blemish on Haywood’s record, and the more Tess learns about Haywood’s fabled history, the more she realizes that not all skeletons will stay safely locked in the closet.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062852021
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/03/2020
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	291,981
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Carol Goodman is the critically acclaimed author of fourteen novels, including The Lake of Dead Languages and The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family, and teaches writing and literature at the New School and SUNY New Paltz.

Editorial Reviews

01/06/2020

Tess, the unreliable narrator of this exciting, if flawed, psychological thriller from Mary Higgins Clark Award–winner Goodman (The Night Visitors), teaches English at Haywood, a prestigious boarding school on the Maine coast, where her 17-year-old son, Rudy, is a student. Early one morning, Rudy texts Tess asking her to pick him up near the beach. Tess finds Rudy in a bloodstained sweatshirt, and he reveals that he had a fight with his bright, go-getter fellow classmate and girlfriend, Lila. A few hours later, Tess receives a phone call from Haywood’s headmistress informing her that Lila’s body has been found on the beach. With a history of aggression, Rudy is a person of interest in Lila’s murder, and his overbearing mother is desperate to protect him, even if it involves lying to the police and exposing dark secrets about her past concerning Rudy’s father. Unfortunately, most of the characters, including the irritating Tess, grate, and the culprit’s identity comes as no surprise. Still, readers will have a hard time putting this one down thanks to Goodman’s storytelling powers. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Carol Goodman is a superb writer, and she explores family and small-town dynamics in a way that's both suspenseful and touchingly real. THE SEA OF LOST GIRLS features a fascinating cast of characters, intriguing setting — and enough shocking twists to leave you breathless. I loved it."

Alison Gaylin

02/14/2020

Tess and Harmon Henshaw are both professors at Haywood, an elite boarding school in Boston. Tess's 17-year-old son, Rudy (from a previous relationship), is a student at Haywood and lives in a dorm on campus. When a text from Rudy comes at three o'clock in the morning, Can you come get me?, she knows something is terribly wrong. The next morning, her worst fears are confirmed when the headmaster (and her boss) informs her that student Lila, Rudy's girlfriend, is dead. Tess will do everything to protect her son, and while the police are gathering clues, she scrambles to uncover everything she can, and is shocked to discover Rudy may not be the only person of interest. Her husband, Harmon, also had a relationship with Lila. He was helping her research a historical paper about Haywood. Secrets and lies hidden for decades now threaten to be revealed, and the truth may be more complex than anyone imagined. VERDICT Another strong, well-plotted suspense novel from Goodman (The Lake of Dead Languages), this is recommended for psychological suspense collections. Women's fiction aficionados may also want to give it a try. [See Prepub Alert, 8/25/19.]—Cynthia Price, Francis Marion Univ. Lib., Florence, SC

Library Journal