Hailed as Germany’s Patricia Highsmith, Petra Hammesfahr crafts intricate crime and suspense novels, alongside screenplays for film and television. Her breakthrough novel achieved international critical and commercial success, including a fifteen-month bestseller run in Germany. This success was later adapted into a television series. Hammesfahr is known for her deep dives into character psychology and her exploration of the darker aspects of human nature.
Nadia and Susanne have just met. They look uncannily alike, practically doppelgangers, but one is filthy rich, with a husband and a lover, and the other dirt poor and single. When Nadia eventually asks Susanne to spend the weekend with her husband how can she refuse the outrageous fee on offer?
The basis for the Emmy-nominated "instantly gripping" (Washington Post) anthology series on USA starring Jessica Biel, The Sinner is an internationally bestselling psychological thriller surrounding an unexplained murdert On a sunny summer afternoon by the lake, Cora Bender stabs a complete stranger to death. Why? What would cause this quiet, kind young mother to commit such a startling act of violence in front of her family and friends? Cora quickly confesses and it seems like an open-and-shut case. But the police commissioner, haunted by these unaswered questions, refuses to close the file and begins his own maverick investigation. So begins the slow unraveling of Cora’s past, a harrowing descent into the depths of her own psyche and the violent secrets buried within. The Sinner is a dark, spell spellbinding novel, where the truth is to be questioned at every turn. “As I read [the novel], I kept going, ‘I know where this is going—there’s no way this could be interesting.’ And then it would just take a completely different direction.” —Jessica Biel “The Sinner is unnerving and weird and guaranteed to stick with you weeks later.” —Sarah Weinman, editor of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives and Women Crime Writers “Hauntingly insightful and sensitive.” —The Guardian