Burn After ReadingCatherine Ryan Howard2024

A year ago, former professional cyclist Jack Smyth lost his wife in a fire at their home. But the nation’s sympathy turned to anger when it emerged that she had died before the fire started, in a violent attack. Although Jack has never been charged in connection to her death, a suffocating cloud of suspicion hangs over him and he’s become convinced that the only way out is to tell his side of the story.

When Emily Joyce is offered the gig as his ghostwriter, her main motivation for saying yes is the payday. She flies out to the eerie, empty, master-planned town of Sanctuary, Florida, to hole up with Jack for a week, getting his story down.

But the story Jack tells isn’t the one she expected, and soon Emily is thrown into a dangerous plot twist that she may not be able to write her way out of …