'I can't take my eyes off the water. Can you?' It's summer when Elm Hill lido opens, having stood empty for years. For Natalie Steele - wife, mother, teacher - it offers freedom from the tightly controlled routines of work and family. Especially when it leads her to Lara Channing, a charismatic former actress with a lavish bohemian lifestyle, who seems all too happy to invite Natalie into her elite circle. Soon Natalie is spending long days at the pool, socializing with new friends and basking in a popularity she didn't know she'd been missing. Real life, and the person she used to be, begins to feel very far away. But is such a change in fortunes too good to be true? Why are dark memories of a summer long ago now threatening to surface? And, without realizing, could Natalie have been swept dangerously out of her depth?
Author
Hello and welcome! I am the bestselling author of 16 novels - a fact I can't quite believe myself - and my books are published all over the world. My brand-new thriller THE ONLY SUSPECT is out now and described by the Daily Mail as 'a perfect mix of nostalgia and menace'. OUR HOUSE is the one you may be most familiar with as it's on our screens as a major four-part ITV drama starring Martin Compston, Tuppence Middleton and Rupert Penry-Jones. This is the novel that turned my career around - right when I was about to give up. It won the 2019 British Book Awards Book of the Year - Crime & Thriller and was shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, the Capital Crime Amazon Publishing Best Crime Novel of the Year Award, and the Audible Sounds of Crime Award. It was also longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award and the Specsavers National Book Awards. I couldn't have asked for more, really, and feel so proud that readers are continuing to discover it and recommend it far and wide. THE HEIGHTS is my latest paperback - it's a twisty revenge thriller whose narrator, Ellen, has a strange fear of heights known as 'high place phenomenon'. You could say she's my most Hitchcock-inspired character yet... I can't wait for you to read it and and tell me if you're Team Ellen or not ;-) The book is in development for a TV series, so watch this space... A bit about me: I live in a South London neighbourhood not unlike the one in my books, with my husband, teenage daughter, and a fox-red Labrador called Bertie who is the apple of my eye. Books, TV and long walks are my passions - oh, and drinking wine in the sun with family and friends. My favourite authors include Tom Wolfe, Patricia Highsmith, Barbara Vine and Agatha Christie. For more book news (and doting pictures of Bertie, regularly updated!), catch me on Twitter @louise_candlish, on Instagram @louisecandlish or facebook.com/LouiseCandlishAuthor. I'd love to hear from you.
