Ordinary Monster - by Catherine Ryan Howard (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Ordinary Monster is the brand new bingeable, read in one sitting, high concept thriller from the Irish number one bestseller, Catherine Ryan Howard.

Emma's asleep in bed one morning when she is woken by a knocking on the door. To her alarm, it's the police - and they have bad news. They believe evidence connected to an unsolved crime might be buried beneath her house in an affluent Dublin suburb. The family need to leave - immediately - so the police can start digging.

Panicked, Emma calls the previous owners: her parents.

When she can't get hold of either one of them, detectives tell her the rest. The crime in question is a string of disappearances dating back more than thirty years, five women in all. After all this time, a cold-case review has led them to a suspect, a former colleague of one of the missing women.

Better known as Emma's father, Aidan.

About the Author

Catherine Ryan Howard is an award-winning, #1 bestselling thriller writer from Cork, Ireland. Her work has been shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, the UK Crime Writers Association John Creasey/New Blood and Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Awards, and the An Post Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year multiple times. Her novels have been included in The New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year, The Washington Post's Best Mysteries and Thrillers of the Year, and The Sunday Times (London)'s Best Thrillers of the Year. She is published in twenty languages, and a number of her titles have been optioned for the screen. Catherine's fifth novel, 56 Days, won the An Post Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year and was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, the world's most valuable annual literary prize. A screen adaptation starring Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia debuted exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in early 2026. Prior to writing full time, Catherine worked for a travel company in the Netherlands and in Walt Disney World, Florida. She lives in Dublin.