Half Moon Bay - by Alice Laplante (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"An eerie, tense, and finely written novel...Readers will grip their chairs" (SFGate.com) as they try to unravel this tale of psychological suspense from the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of Turn of Mind.

Jane loses everything when her teenage daughter is killed in a senseless accident. Devastated, she manages to make one tiny stab at a new life: she moves from San Francisco to the seaside town of Half Moon Bay. Jane is inconsolable, and yet, as the months go by, she is able to cobble together some version of a job, of friends, of the possibility of peace.

And then, children begin to disappear. And soon, Jane sees her own pain reflected in all the parents in the town. She wonders if she will be able to live through the aching loss, the fear all around her. And as the disappearances continue, she begins to see that what her neighbors are wondering is if it is Jane herself who has unleashed the horror of loss.

Alice LaPlante's "well-crafted novel of psychological suspense" is a chilling story about a mother haunted by her past, a "brooding suspense novel...dark, starkly beautiful...LaPlante uses a seductively dangerous landscape to mirror her heroine's inner life" (Kirkus Reviews).

Review Quotes

"LaPlante knows how to ramp up suspense...Readers will grip their chairs to see if this wounded soul crashes or pulls up."-- "San Francisco Gate"

"The way that Alice LaPlante finesses this witch hunt-like thread gives the absorbingly macabre Half Moon Bay its underpinning of compassion."-- "Shelf Awareness"

"This well-crafted novel of psychological suspense will appeal as much to mainstream fiction readers as genre fans."-- "Publishers Weekly"

A "brooding suspense novel...dark, starkly beautiful...LaPlante uses a seductively dangerous landscape to mirror her heroine's inner life."-- "Kirkus"

About the Author

Alice LaPlante is an award-winning writer whose bestselling books include Half Moon Bay, A Circle of Wives, Method and Madness--The Making of a Story, and the New York Times bestseller Turn of Mind. She taught creative writing at Stanford University where she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. She lives with her family in Mallorca, Spain.