Every Secret Thing - Hardcover

Laura Lippman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752859854 ISBN 13: 9780752859859

Publisher: Orion, 2003

Synopsis

From critically acclaimed, multiple-award winner Laura Lippman comes a riveting story of love and murder, guilt and innocence.

Two little girls banished from a neighborhood birthday party find a stroller with an infant inside on an unfamiliar Baltimore street. What happens next is shocking and terrible, causing the irreparable devastation of three separate families.

Seven years later, Alice Manning and Ronnie Fuller, now eighteen, are released from "kid prison" to begin their lives over again. But the unanswered questions about the original crime continue to haunt the parents, the lawyers, the police, and all the adults in Alice's and Ronnie's lives. And now another child has disappeared, under freakishly similar circumstances.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Since her debut in 1997, Laura Lippman has won virtually every major prize in the mystery-writing field and earned the highest critical praise for her Tess Monaghan series, which has been called "spectacular" (New York Times), "terrific fun" (Washington Post), "a delight" (Baltimore Sun), and "the best mystery writing around" (Village Voice). Now Lippman steps outside her series to deliver her darkest, most troubling tale -- and vaults into the crime-fiction elite with a haunting story of murder, fate's accidents, and the stories we tell ourselves when we try to make sense of the unthinkable.

On a July afternoon two little girls, banished from a birthday party, take a wrong turn onto an unfamiliar Baltimore street -- and encounter an abandoned stroller with a baby inside it. Dutiful Alice Manning and unpredictable Ronnie Fuller only want to be helpful, to be good. People like children who are good, Alice thinks. But whatever the girls' real intentions, things go horribly awry and three families are destroyed.

Seven years later Alice and Ronnie are heading home again -- only separately this time, their fragile bond long shattered, their secrets still closely kept. Advised to avoid each other, they enter a world where they essentially have no past. In exchange, they are promised a fresh start, the chance to mold their own future.

That promise is broken when a child disappears, under disturbingly similar circumstances. And the adults in Alice's and Ronnie's lives -- the parents, the lawyers, the police -- realize that they must now confront the shattering truths they couldn't face seven years earlier. Or another mother will lose her child.

Homicide detective Nancy Porter was a rookie cop when she solved the original case with a bit of freakish luck -- and almost derailed her own career. Adept at finding the small things that can make or break a homicide case, now she must master the larger picture in order to understand where guilt truly lies. For no one is innocent in this world. Not even the children.

About the Author

Since Laura Lippman’s debut, she has won multiple awards and critical acclaim for provocative, timely crime novels set in her beloved hometown of Baltimore. Laura has been nominated for more than 50 awards for crime fiction and won almost 20, including the Edgar. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages. Now a perennial New York Times bestselling author, she lives in Baltimore and New Orleans with her family.

Edition details

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0752859854
• ISBN 13: 9780752859859
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400