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A USA Today Bestseller
With psychological suspense, emotional depth and hypnotic prose, O. Henry Prize winner Jan Ellison delivers a brilliantly paced, beautifully written debut novel about one woman’s reckoning with a youthful mistake.
“An emotional detective story with every human layer laid bare.”
— New York Journal of Books
“Ellison is a tantalizing storyteller…moving her story forward with cinematic verve.”
— USA Today
“Rich with suspense . . . Lovely writing guides us through, driven by a quiet generosity.”
— San Francisco Chronicle (Book Club Pick)
“Delicious, lazy-day reading. Just don’t underestimate the writing.”
— Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 Editors’ Pick
“Part psychological thriller, part character study, I peeled back the pages of this book as fast as I could.”
— Huffington Post
At nineteen, Annie Black trades a bleak future in a washed out California town for a London winter of drinking and abandon. Twenty years later, she is a San Francisco lighting designer and happily married mother of three who has put her reckless youth behind her. Then a photo from that distant winter in Europe arrives inexplicably in her mailbox, and an old obsession is awakened.
Past and present collide, Annie’s marriage falters, and her son takes a car ride that ends with his life hanging in the balance. Now Annie must confront her own transgressions and fight for her family by untangling the mysteries of the turbulent winter that drew an invisible map of her future. Gripping, insightful and lyrical, A Small Indiscretion announces the arrival of major new voice in literary suspense as it unfolds a story of denial, passion, forgiveness – and the redemptive power of love.
