A Book A Week

I love it when an author can transport you to a specific place and time. That's exactly what Caitlin Mullen accomplished with her debut novel, Please See Us. Set in a struggling Atlantic City, the book captured a seaside town filled with the faded promise of glamour and reinvention, making it the backdrop for a dark, slow-burning suspense story that completely pulled me in. By the time I finished, I was left with that rare post-book euphoria that only comes from discovering an author whose voice resonates with you. Naturally, I was eager to see what Mullen would do next.

That opportunity has finally arrived with Heather, her sophomore novel. This time, she trades the neon glow and crumbling casinos of Atlantic City for the dense wilderness of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. The setting may be different, but Mullen's gift for atmosphere remains intact. From the very first pages, she creates a sense of place so vivid that it feels as though you're wandering through the story yourself, and she wraps that atmosphere around another suspenseful tale that hooked me from the start.

It’s 1994, and sixteen-year-old Annabelle has just discovered that her twin sister, Sabrina, is having an affair with an older man. At first, she’s stunned. The sisters have always been inseparable, sharing secrets and navigating adolescence side by side. How could Sabrina keep something this significant from her?

But shock soon gives way to curiosity. Who is this mysterious man? What does he want with Sabrina? And why has her sister become so secretive? As Annabelle begins searching for answers, the unthinkable happens. Both girls disappear.

Years later, in the same New Jersey town, newly appointed police chief Callie Hauser is determined to prove herself. She’s spent her entire career trying to step out from under the shadow of her family’s reputation—particularly her mother's—and is eager to lead the department into a new era. But when an arrest unexpectedly reopens questions surrounding the decades-old disappearance of the twins, Callie finds herself pulled into a mystery many people would rather leave buried. The deeper she digs, the more unsettling the answers become. Long-held assumptions begin to crumble, loyalties are tested, and Callie is forced to confront uncomfortable questions about the town she serves and the people she trusts.

Caitlin Mullen's gift for pairing atmospheric settings with multigenerational mystery is on full display in Heather. She transports readers to this isolated corner of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where the dense woods become a character in their own right. Hidden among the trees are secrets that span generations, connecting women whose lives are separated by decades yet bound together in unexpected ways.

Mullen alternates between past and present timelines, carefully peeling back layers of the mystery and revealing the truth piece by piece. The novel reminded me a bit of Liz Moore's The God of the Woods. Like that book, Heather is dark, meticulously plotted, and interested in much more than simply solving a crime. It explores family, womanhood, inherited trauma, and the ways in which the past continues to shape the present long after we think we've left it behind. While I ultimately connected a bit more with Mullen's debut, Heather is nevertheless a compelling and richly written mystery. It's the kind of novel that slowly tightens its grip until you're fully immersed in its world, eager to uncover each secret hidden among the trees.

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

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Kathryn Stockett made waves when her debut novel, The Help, was released in 2009. The book became a publishing phenomenon, spending more than 100 weeks on bestseller lists before being adapted into an acclaimed film. But as the dust settled, a broader conversation emerged about the novel's perspective and Stockett's place in telling a story centered on the experiences of Black women during the Civil Rights era. Looking back on my own reading of the novel, I can see that I was largely swept up in its page-turning narrative and didn't spend much time considering those questions myself.

Controversy aside, The Help was undeniably a cultural force. That's why I was surprised when the years passed without another novel from Stockett. One year became five, then ten, and eventually fifteen. Now, after one of the longest gaps between a bestselling debut and a sophomore novel that I can recall, Stockett has returned with The Calamity Club. This time, she largely sidesteps the racial themes that defined the conversation around her first book, instead turning her attention to a girls' orphanage struggling to survive on the eve of the Great Depression.

The novel alternates between two primary perspectives. The first belongs to eleven-year-old Meg, one of the "big girls" at the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum. Meg is smart—perhaps a little too smart for her own good. She knows that older girls rarely get adopted, and she suspects that's why Garnett Pittman, the woman who runs the orphanage, seems to take particular pleasure in making her life miserable. According to Pittman, there’s no future for a girl like Meg. Instead, she spends her days confined to a sweltering, mold-infested office, counting down the years until she's old enough to leave and take a job at the local cannery.

Marion Crane is on the run, carrying stolen cash and desperate for a place to stay the night. She finds refuge at the isolated Bates Motel, where she meets the proprietor, Norman Bates—a handsome, if somewhat awkward, young man who seems unusually attached to his mother. After sharing a late-night sandwich with him, Marion retires to her room and turns on the shower.

She steps beneath the spray. The sound of falling water fills the room. Then, through the translucent curtain, a shadow begins to take shape.

The screech of violins and the scrape of shower rings on metal explode across the soundtrack as the curtain is pulled back, revealing a knife-wielding figure. Marion's confusion gives way to terror. She screams. The scene descends into a frenzy of flashing blades, splashing water, and chaos. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it ends. The killer slips away. Marion lies dead in the tub, water pouring from the showerhead as blood swirls down the drain.

It's one of the most iconic scenes in film history, a sequence that shocked audiences upon release and continues to influence horror storytelling more than sixty years later.

But what if Marion didn't die? What if, in those frantic moments, she fought back—and won? What if Norman Bates ended up dead on the bathroom floor instead?

That's the irresistible premise at the heart of Marion, in which author Leah Rowan reimagines one of cinema's most famous moments and follows the ripple effects of a story that suddenly takes a very different path. The moment I heard that setup, I knew I had to read it.

With Marion, Leah Rowan modernizes the original story and gives agency to a character who was largely powerless in Psycho. Here, Marion hasn't stolen money simply to run away with a lover. Instead, she's taken funds from the advertising agency where she works in a desperate attempt to help her sister escape an abusive relationship. It's a change that immediately reframes the character and makes her motivations feel more urgent and sympathetic.

And yes, Marion fights back.

What follows after that pivotal moment is a twisting chain of violence, secrets, and revelations that kept me completely riveted. Rowan takes a story whose ending feels predetermined and makes it unpredictable again. The novel moves quickly, embraces its pulpy roots, and never loses sight of the tension that made Hitchcock's original film so memorable.

Most importantly, Marion herself is a fantastic protagonist. She's sharp, resourceful, and determined in ways the original story never allowed her to be. The result is a clever reimagining that honors its source material while confidently carving out its own identity. Fast-paced, suspenseful, and enormously entertaining, Marion is the kind of book that's easy to devour in a weekend and a perfect addition to any summer reading list.

For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads. 

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