Bittersweet

Suspenseful and cinematic, Bittersweet exposes the gothic underbelly ofan idyllic world of privilege and an outsider's hunger to belong.On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate,thebeautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow.Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century, it's the kind of place where children twirl sparklers across the lawn during cocktail hour.Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts,and themoneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead. Before she knows it, she has everything she's ever wanted: friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs.But as Mabel becomes an insider, aterrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact - and what they might do to anyone who threatens them.Mabelmust choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family's dark secrets and make Ev's world her own.From the Hardcover edition.