The First Mistake

Happily remarried to Nathan after the death of her first husband, Alice is also grateful for good friend Beth. But then Nathan starts vanishing for stretches, and Alice gets the sense Beth isn't as reliable as she thought. Jones debuted in 2016 with the LJ-starred The Other Woman.

April 29, 2019
Alice, the narrator of this riveting domestic thriller set in the U.K. from bestseller Jones (The Other Woman), and her second husband, Nathan, have a thriving company, AT Designs, which Alice and her late first husband, Tom, founded using his money. When a buyer backs out of a real estate project in Japan the couple are involved in, Nathan proposes that they take on all aspects of the deal: “buy the land, build the apartments, design the interiors and sell them on ourselves.” Alice is reluctant to go along with Nathan, whom she doesn’t trust since she believes he’s having an affair. Alice has confided in her best friend, Beth, about Nathan’s straying, but she’s further shaken when Beth shares information that causes her to question everything she thought she knew about Tom. As Alice struggles to come to terms with Beth’s revelations, she continues to search for proof that Nathan is cheating on her. The twisty plot builds to a shocking conclusion. This puzzler reinforces Jones’s status as a rising suspense star. 150,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Tanera Simons, Darley Anderson (U.K.).

May 15, 2019
Cracks are appearing in Alice Davies' enviable life. Having endured a rough patch years earlier after her husband, Tom Evans, died, she found love again with Nathan Davies, who joined AT Designs, the London company she and Tom founded. But now there are reports that her younger daughter, Olivia, is bullying classmates and hints that Nathan is having an affair at the same time that he's promoting a major deal to decorate an apartment building in Japan. But the biggest blow comes from Alice's one close friend, single mother Beth Russo, who confides that the father of her daughter, Millie, who is Olivia's friend, is a man named Thomas Evans with the same birth date as Alice's late husband. Staggered by the seeming infidelities of both of her husbands, Alice soldiers on as she's faced with a significant decision regarding the Japan project. Jones, who showed her skill at ramping up suspense in her debut, The Other Woman (2018), surprises everyone with the revelations in her powerful climactic close, which presents Alice with a fateful choice. A provocative view of trust, placed and misplaced.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)