Bøger af Nicole Lundrigan

"A tragedy brings a young boy into the home of a 'perfect' family--one whose dark secrets begin closing in, until a horrifying moment changes everything. Tommie Ware's life is turned upside down the summer of 1958, just after his eleventh birthday. When his beloved aunt--the woman who raised him--doesn't return after her shift as a night nurse and is later found murdered, there is only one place left for Tommie to go: 'home' to the mother who handed him over the day he was born. All is not as it seems behind the hedgerow surrounding the lavish Henneberry estate where Tommie's mother, Esther, works as live-in housekeeper. Her employers have agreed he can stay until she 'sorts things out, ' but as she's at the family's beck and call around the clock, Tommie is mostly left on his own to navigate the grounds, the massive house, and the twisted family inside. Soon he is enmeshed in the oppressive attentions of matriarch Muriel, who is often heavily medicated, and of fifteen-year-old, Martin, who treats Tommie sometimes like a kid brother, sometimes like a pawn in a confusing game. Dr. Henneberry mostly ignores Tommie, and seems eager for him to be gone. Then there's the elderly neighbour, who may know more about the family's past than anyone else will say. By summer's end, the secrets and games tighten around Tommie and his mother, until a horrific crime is discovered and we are faced with an unthinkable question: could an eleven-year-old boy really have committed cold-blooded murder?"--

For The Widow Tree, Nicole Lundrigan steps away from her usual locale (the East Coast) and sets the story in 1950’s post-war Yugoslavia. The finding of a long lost stash of Roman coins by three childhood friends precipitates the unraveling of relationships as they argue over what to do with the new found wealth. Nevena insists they should be turned over as they rightfully belong to the country. János wants to keep them. And Dorján walks the line between the two. The decision to conceal their discovery turns disastrous when János disappears. Dorján and Nevena are left to question everything they believed to be true, while the mother of the missing boy, a widow named Gitta, slowly unravels. Has János used the money to escape the home that stifles him? Or has something much more sinister taken place?The Widow Tree is a compelling, richly layered story of fatal plans and silent betrayals in a tightly knit village, where the post-war air is simultaneously flush with hope and weighted with suspicion. Amidst an intricate web of cultural tensions, government control, family bonds, and past mistakes, the truth behind many closely guarded secrets is revealed—with life-altering consequences.