Dead of Summer: A Novel

“If you like tense, gripping beach reads about rich people behaving badly—you’ve come to the right place.” —Julia Bartz, New York Times bestselling author

Years after her best friend mysteriously disappeared from a remote New England island, a young woman returns in search of answers in this atmospheric and scintillating thriller from Jessa Maxwell, nationally bestselling author of the “deliciously entertaining” (Sarah Penner, New York Times bestselling author) The Golden Spoon.

Faith finds the extravagant ring on the first day of what is to be a summer of luxury. David Clarke, scion of a billionaire family and her boyfriend, has brought her to his “cottage” for the season on pictersque Hadley Island. Marriage admittedly wasn’t Faith’s plan, but the luxury is hard to resist, especially for someone like her.

But beneath Hadley Island’s sun-soaked glamour lie old betrayals and buried secrets: a man cast out and living alone at sea’s edge, and David’s childhood friends—two girls, one who died at his family’s Fourth of July party, and another who fled to New York, never to be seen again. When another young woman goes missing, it becomes clear that while the wealthy love Hadley Island for its seclusion, small communities never forget, and bodies long thought gone have a nasty habit of returning with the tide.

“Dead of Summer has everything you could want in a vacation thriller: a haunting disappearance, an atmospheric coastal setting, sinister secrets, suspicious characters, and billionaires behaving badly. This is Jessa Maxwell’s best yet—I devoured it in two days” (Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot).