INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"A superb suspense writer…Brava, Ruth Ware. I daresay even Henry James would be impressed." -Maureen Corrigan, author of So We Read On
"This appropriately twisty Turn of the Screw update finds the Woman in Cabin 10 author in her most menacing mode, unfurling a shocking saga of murder and deception." -Entertainment Weekly
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lying Game and The Death of Mrs. Westaway comes this thrilling novel that explores the dark side of technology.
When she stumbles across the ad, she's looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss-a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten-by the luxurious "smart" home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.
What she doesn't know is that she's stepping into a nightmare-one that will end with a child dead and herself awaiting trial for murder.
Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the events that led to her incarceration. It wasn't just the constant surveillance from the home's cameras, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn't just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn't even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman.
It was everything.
She knows she's made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn't always ideal. She's not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she's not guilty-at least not of murder-but somebody is.
Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware's signature suspenseful style, The Turn of the Key is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time. Ruth Ware worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language, and a press officer before settling down as a full-time writer. She now lives with her family in Sussex, on the south coast of England. She is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail (Toronto) bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood; The Woman in Cabin 10; The Lying Game; The Death of Mrs. Westaway; The Turn of the Key; One by One; The It Girl; Zero Days; One Perfect Couple; and The Woman in Suite 11. Visit her at RuthWare.com or follow her on socials @RuthWareWriter. "Imogen Church narrates Ruth Ware's unsettling update of Henry James's TURN OF THE SCREW. Nanny Rowan Caine arrives for her first day at what seems like a dream job to find that things are not as perfect as they first seemed. The house's 'smart' system malfunctions in the middle of the night, and the children hate her for no apparent reason. Church ably handles the children's voices and the range of accents, including the Scottish housekeeper's. Her increasingly hysterical performance captures Rowan's slow unraveling, upping the creepy factor as the novel's heavily foreshadowed tragedy draws near. This outstanding listen should delight Ware's many fans." "Ruth Ware is good at writing creepy tales and this novel about a nanny moving into an apparently haunted smart house takes a gothic trope and modernizes it. Even better is an ending that you won't see coming and that reframes everything you've just heard. Narrator Imogen Church underscores the story's eeriness, as she sounds appropriately young and energetic, easily conveying fright and desperation."
