Thy Neighbor

From the New York Times bestselling author, a first novel as spellbinding as her acclaimed fiction

Thirty-four year old Nick Walsh, a freelance writer living alone in a Midwestern suburb in the same house he grew up in, is a cynical, deeply disturbed man in a lot of pain, still trying to comprehend the circumstances surrounding the murder/suicide of his parents thirteen years earlier (his father killed his mother and then shot himself). Struggling to understand his life, to find some relief and work through his grief, while also worrying about whether he could turn out like his father, Nick is by turns paranoid and distant as well as intensely emotional and empathetic-qualities he does his best to blunt by self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. As the novel opens, he has secretly started to videotape some of his neighbors within their own homes, monitoring their actions via video screens in his basement, as well as beginning a romantic encounter with a mysterious woman named Monica that he meets in a local bar, a woman with no known address or identification who lives by stealing things. Nick also re-establishes a relationship with his older neighbor across the street, Mrs. Bloom, whose granddaughter Robin had disappeared when she was twelve years old. How Nick ends up finding redemption for himself, and what Robin's disappearance may have had to do with the murder/suicide of Nick's parents, is the subject of this riveting novel.

A novel of surprising twists and turns, at once unsettling, moving, and wickedly funny, THY NEIGHBOR explores the nature of grief, the potential isolation of suburban life, and who we really are when we think no one is watching.