Katherine Faulkner, the acclaimed author of GREENWICH PARK and THE OTHER MOTHERS, returns with THE BREAK-IN, a twisty and twisted domestic thriller about a woman’s recovery from a brutal break-in --- and the terrifying mystery she discovers in its wake.

The evening of July 14th was supposed to be a normal one for Alice Rathbone. The happily married mother of a young daughter, Alice had invited her best friends, Yas and Stella, over for champagne after accepting a prestigious new job as an art restorer. Though all three have daughters the same age, Alice is fortunate enough to afford a babysitter, Becca, who watches the girls in the next room as she and her friends gab about life, careers and parenting.

Then the unthinkable happens: a slurring, sneering young man arrives at Alice’s basement door, asking “Where is he?” and calling Alice a liar. When he grabs a kitchen knife and makes for the rest of the house --- where the children are safely watching a movie --- Alice attempts to stop him by bashing a kitchen stool over his head. The intruder, later revealed to be 18-year-old Ezra Jones, dies at the hospital as a result of his injuries. Alice’s story is blasted all over the news the following day, with scores of strangers debating the worst question of her life: Is she a murderer, or simply a woman forced to use self-defense?

"Full of psychological twists galore, the kind of gaslighting that will have even readers wondering what they believe, and a shocking conclusion that is more sinister than anything you’ll see coming, THE BREAK-IN is Faulkner’s best book yet."

Months later, Alice has been cleared of murder charges, and everyone seems ready to move on, especially her husband, Jamie. He is sick of finding Alice scrolling through her phone at night, reading and rereading the same articles, poring over the comments debating her innocence, and, worst of all, playing and replaying a single video. In it, Ezra’s teary-eyed mother, Linda, says that he was just a boy who got caught up in something that he shouldn’t have, that his being there was all a tragic accident. Despite reviewing her own history and sharing everything she knows with the police, Alice cannot find a connection between her and Ezra, yet she feels certain that it was no random break-in. And, as a mother herself, she cannot bear the idea that she has taken a child from his mother and forced an older woman to bury her own son.

Despite everyone --- from her husband to her friends to the police --- demanding that Alice move on, her fears are newly awakened when a strange series of events begins to plague her. First, Becca submits her resignation abruptly for seemingly no reason. Then an adorable keychain that her daughter made for her vanishes, along with some earrings, a camisole, and a few other odds and ends --- nothing valuable, nothing she couldn’t have just lost, but she knows she didn’t. Then comes the bizarre phone call. A disguised voice tells Alice that Ezra’s being there that night was no accident or random occurrence, and that she should be very, very careful.

On a misguided attempt at finding answers, Alice strikes up a friendship with Linda, along with Ezra's pregnant twin sister, Jade. Alice believes that the women don’t recognize her, so she is able to investigate their family dynamic more closely. While she can discover nothing that seems to indicate that Ezra was tied to gangs, drugs or any other criminal activity, there’s a sharpness to Jade that suggests she knows more about everything --- not only the break-in, but also the world around her and how its darkest corners operate --- than she should.

Finally armed with some decent evidence that something is connected, Alice approaches Stella, who's a journalist, to help her look into Ezra’s other relatives. But Stella seems fixated not on Alice’s connection to the family, but Jamie’s --- impossible, of course, given that his long career in charity work keeps him not just busy but away. Still, Alice knows that there’s more to the story of the break-in than anyone is willing to see. And when Jamie begins acting strangely, she must wonder if the mystery at the heart of it all is one much closer to home than she ever suspected.

With an angry, diabolical Jade breathing down her neck, a grieving mother writing her own story about what happened, and Stella sticking her nose in Alice’s family business, Alice must ask herself just how far she is willing to go to protect her family…or at least whatever is left of it.

Katherine Faulkner has a talent for combining truly domestic stories --- early motherhood, parenting, and finding balance between marriage and motherhood --- with delicious, ripped-from-the-headlines scenarios that reveal a darker side to domestic bliss. In THE BREAK-IN, she pairs poignant, emotionally resonant themes of anxiety and paranoia with a mystery that twists and turns like a child refusing to be buckled into her car seat. Alice’s story is familiar at first, a mother forced to defend her family against an intruder, but Faulkner manages to turn this open-and-shut case into something with arms, legs and teeth.

Though Alice’s investigation into the Jones family and their connection to her forms the throughline of the book, chapters from the points of view of Linda, Becca, Stella and more expose a community with more secrets than bonds, more lies than truths, all of it centered on Alice’s family. Combined, these varying --- and independently fascinating --- perspectives create a thick, creepy atmosphere, one that will have readers checking their locks and turning on their lights as Alice races for answers.

Full of psychological twists galore, the kind of gaslighting that will have even readers wondering what they believe, and a shocking conclusion that is more sinister than anything you’ll see coming, THE BREAK-IN is Faulkner’s best book yet. It is sure to be a breakout hit that will launch her onto numerous bestseller and “Best of” lists.