National Bestseller - A haunting, gripping, and gorgeously written reimagining of the Lizzie Borden murders from "a major new talent" (Booklist)
"Eerie and compelling . . . impossible to look away."--Paula Hawkins
Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.
Or did she?
Just after 11am on August 4, 1892, the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden are discovered. He's found on the living room sofa, she upstairs on the bedroom floor, both gruesomely murdered with an axe.
It's the younger daughter, Lizzie, who's first on the scene, so it's Lizzie who the police first question. But there are others in the household with stories to tell: older sister Emma, Irish maid Bridget, the girls' Uncle John, and a boy who knows more than anyone realizes.
In a dazzlingly original and chilling reimagining of this most notorious of unsolved mysteries, Sarah Schmidt opens to the door to the Borden home and leads us into its murkiest corners, where jealousies, long-simmering rivalries, and the darkest of thoughts reside.