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Book Cover for: The Turn of the Key, Ruth Ware

The Turn of the Key

Ruth Ware

Reader Score

84%

84% of readers

recommend this book

Critic Reviews

Great

Based on 13 reviews on

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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"A superb suspense writer...Brava, Ruth Ware. I daresay even Henry James would be impressed." --Maureen Corrigan, author of So We Read On

"This appropriately twisty Turn of the Screw update finds the Woman in Cabin 10 author in her most menacing mode, unfurling a shocking saga of murder and deception." --Entertainment Weekly

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Lying Game and The Death of Mrs. Westaway comes this thrilling novel that explores the dark side of technology.

When she stumbles across the ad, she's looking for something else completely. But it seems like too good an opportunity to miss--a live-in nannying post, with a staggeringly generous salary. And when Rowan Caine arrives at Heatherbrae House, she is smitten--by the luxurious "smart" home fitted out with all modern conveniences, by the beautiful Scottish Highlands, and by this picture-perfect family.

What she doesn't know is that she's stepping into a nightmare--one that will end with a child dead and herself in prison awaiting trial for murder.

Writing to her lawyer from prison, she struggles to explain the events that led to her incarceration. It wasn't just the constant surveillance from the home's cameras, or the malfunctioning technology that woke the household with booming music, or turned the lights off at the worst possible time. It wasn't just the girls, who turned out to be a far cry from the immaculately behaved model children she met at her interview. It wasn't even the way she was left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the enigmatic handyman.

It was everything.

She knows she's made mistakes. She admits that she lied to obtain the post, and that her behavior toward the children wasn't always ideal. She's not innocent, by any means. But, she maintains, she's not guilty--at least not of murder--but somebody is.

Full of spellbinding menace and told in Ruth Ware's signature suspenseful style, The Turn of the Key is an unputdownable thriller from the Agatha Christie of our time.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
  • Publish Date: May 12nd, 2020
  • Pages: 384
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.30in - 1.10in - 0.60lb
  • EAN: 9781501188787
  • Categories: Thrillers - PsychologicalThrillers - SuspenseLiterary

About the Author

Ware, Ruth: - Ruth Ware worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language, and a press officer before settling down as a full-time writer. She now lives with her family in Sussex, on the south coast of England. She is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail (Toronto) bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood; The Woman in Cabin 10; The Lying Game; The Death of Mrs. Westaway; The Turn of the Key; One by One; The It Girl; Zero Days; and One Perfect Couple. Visit her at RuthWare.com or follow her on socials @RuthWareWriter.

Critics’ reviews

Praise for this book

"A superb suspense writer... Ware is a master at signaling the presence of evil at the most mundane moments... Rowan stays put for reasons we won't understand until the final act of this tragedy. And that's when Ware's gifts for structuring an ingenious suspense narrative really come to the fore... Ware pulls out a stunner on the penultimate page that radically alters how we interpret everything that's come before. Brava, Ruth Ware. I daresay even Henry James would be impressed." -Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan for The Washington Post