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Claire McGowan

    January 1, 1981

    Claire McGowan crafts compelling psychological thrillers that delve into the hidden secrets and intricate relationships within close-knit communities. Her writing style is taut and immersive, prioritizing the psychological depth of her characters. She excels at building suspense and delivering surprising twists that keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very end. Her works are characterized by a sharp insight into human nature and its motivations.

    Claire McGowan
    The Lives We Touch
    You Are Here
    The Vanishing Triangle
    I Know You
    The Dead Ground (Paula Maguire 2)
    How to be happy
    • 2024

      Everyone here has killed someone.There is no way off this island.You will all either kill or be killed here.One of these statements is a lie. But which one?Amira’s less than thrilled to be spending the weekend with her husband’s university friends. Two of them are hosting a joint fortieth on a private Scottish island, with vintage champagne, expensive gifts, and soaks in the wood-fired hot tub. Despite the luxury, Amira knows she’s going to feel left out, not to mention freezing cold and cut off.When they decide to play ‘two truths and a lie’, anonymously posting three statements about themselves into a box, years of resentment start bubbling to the surface. And then an extra slip of paper emerges, scrawled with three chilling threats. Who wrote it? And are two of the statements really true—have they all been responsible for someone’s death?With no phone reception and no way off the island, the group are trapped here until the end of the weekend. And as tension rises and secrets are spilled, they can’t shake the feeling that they’re not the only ones here. Is someone watching them? Someone who wants them dead? Or is it one of them who has murder in mind?

      Truth Truth Lie
    • 2023

      From the bestselling author of What You Did comes the story of a young couple who are about to discover that in a house full of secrets there's nowhere to hide... For Helen and George, the remote fixer-upper in Cornwall was supposed to be a dream home, and a way to leave behind the problems they're both running from. But something about the place feels wrong from day one. And why does Helen have a creeping feeling she's seen this house before? Her unease only deepens after renovations begin, when the builders find sinister dolls hidden in the walls. As Helen digs into the house's past, she discovers that the previous owner was not only rumoured to be a witch; she was also imprisoned for a brutal triple murder thirty years earlier. When a horrific accident almost ends in tragedy, Helen worries that the house's secrets are to blame, and as events spiral out of control she discovers George has been lying to her. As the past returns to haunt them, the couple realise they are in terrible danger, and they can't trust anyone--not even each other. Because Helen hasn't been entirely honest with him either...

      Let Me In
    • 2023

      Following a fractured family over a period of twenty years, This Could Be Us is an extraordinarily moving story from bestselling author Claire McGowan.

      This Could Be Us
    • 2022

      From the bestselling author of What You Did comes a chilling story about a missing girl and two potential witnesses. They both think they saw her. But can they trust their own eyes?Mary hasn’t slept in what feels like years. Her two young children never let her rest, and so one exhausting night, in the middle of a London heatwave, she escapes to a nearby park for some air.Tim can’t sleep. It doesn’t feel safe after the terrible thing that happened to him. Seeking solace outside, he encounters a sleepless Mary in the park. There, the two strangers witness what looks like a violent attack in the window of a neighbouring house.Shocked at what they’ve seen, Tim and Mary form an unlikely bond, desperate to find clues. When they see news reports of a missing woman, who was last seen walking alone not far from them, the pair are convinced it’s her they saw being attacked. The police don’t believe them, but when they hear of a potential link to an old murder and a string of disappearances from the area, pressure mounts to find her before it’s too late.But with her marriage under strain and the police on their tail, Mary begins to doubt her own mind…and Tim’s. How reliable is a man who doesn’t sleep?As the pair are drawn into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, the culprit appears to be even closer to home than they thought. Have they got it all wrong, or is something even more sinister going on?

      Are You Awake?
    • 2022

      The Vanishing Triangle

      • 192 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      From the bestselling author of What You Did comes a true-crime investigation that cast a dark shadow over the Ireland of her childhood.Ireland in the 1990s seemed a safe place for women. With the news dominated by the Troubles, it was easy to ignore non-political murders and sexual violence, to trust that you weren’t going to be dragged into the shadows and killed. But beneath the surface, a far darker reality had taken hold.In this candid investigation into the society and circumstances that allowed eight young women to vanish without a trace—no conclusion or conviction, no resolution for their loved ones—bestselling crime novelist Claire McGowan delivers a righteous polemic against the culture of secrecy, victim-blaming and shame that left these women’s bodies unfound, their fates unknown, their assailants unpunished.McGowan reveals an Ireland not of leprechauns and craic but of outdated social and sexual mores, where women and their bodies were of secondary importance to perceived propriety and misguided politics—a place of well-buttoned lips and stony silence, inadequate police and paramilitary threat.Was an unknown serial killer at large or was there something even more insidious at work? In this insightful, sensitively drawn account, McGowan exposes a system that failed these eight women—and continues to fail women to this day.

      The Vanishing Triangle
    • 2022

      The new heart-warming novel by bestselling women's fiction author Eva Woods, in the tradition of Sliding Doors and In Five Years, this novel explores what could have been while also reminding us to have a little faith in what's about to happen.

      You Are Here
    • 2021

      In this tense thriller from the bestselling author of What You Did and The Other Wife, a woman finds a dead body. Will she make the same mistake as last time?When Rachel stumbles upon a body in the woods, she knows what she has to do: run. Get away. Do not be found at the scene. Last time, she didn’t know, and she ended up accused of murder. But when this victim is identified as her boyfriend’s estranged wife, Rachel realises she’s already the prime suspect.With mounting evidence against her, Rachel’s only hope is to keep the truth about herself well hidden. Because twenty years ago she was someone else—Casey, a young nanny trying to make it as an actress in Los Angeles. When the family she worked for were brutally murdered, all the evidence pointed to her and she went to prison. Back then, she narrowly escaped the death penalty and managed to free herself on appeal. Now she’s fighting to save the life she’s spent years piecing back together.But with her behaviour raising suspicion and the police closing in, Rachel can’t help wondering: Was her discovery in the woods really just an awful coincidence, or is someone framing her for murder? Someone who knows who she is, and wants revenge…

      I Know You
    • 2021

      The Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden is a delightful children's book following Sarah, a young girl who one day ventures down to the bottom of her garden. There she finds something unexpected - fairies! Sarah goes on many wonderful adventures with her new fairy friends.

      The Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden
    • 2021

      The Heartbreak Club

      • 336 pages
      • 12 hours of reading
      3.6(26)Add rating

      From the author of ebook bestseller How to be Happy comes a warm-hearted and hopeful look at grief and loss. Sometimes, you meet the right person at exactly the right time - let The Heartbreak Club mend your broken heart.

      The Heartbreak Club
    • 2020

      The Push

      • 367 pages
      • 13 hours of reading
      3.7(442)Add rating

      From the bestselling author of What You Did comes a stunning psychological thriller. One party. Thirteen people. By 3.02 p.m., one of them will be dead. The party should have been six couples from the same baby group, six newborns, a luxurious house. But not everything has gone to plan, and while some are here to celebrate, others have sorrows to drown. When someone falls from the balcony of the house, the secrets and conflicts within the group begin to spill out … DS Alison Hegarty, herself struggling with infertility, is called in to investigate. She’s convinced the fall was not an accident, and finds the new parents have a lot to hide. Wealthy Ed and Monica show off their newborn while their teenage daughter is kept under virtual house arrest. Hazel and Cathy conceived their longed-for baby via an anonymous sperm donor―or so Hazel thinks. Anita and Jeremy planned to adopt from America, but there’s no sign of the child. Kelly, whose violent boyfriend disrupted previous group sessions, came to the party even though she lost her baby. And then there’s Jax, who’s been experiencing strange incidents for months―almost like someone’s out to get her. Is it just a difficult pregnancy? Or could it be payback for something she did in the past? It’s a nightmare of a case, and as events get even darker it begins to look impossible. Only one thing is they all have something to hide. And for one of them, it’s murder.

      The Push