Title: The Wonder Test - a Silicon Valley thriller
Publisher: Information not available
Summary:
a gripping psychological thriller about helicopter parents, the 1%, and the dark side of suburbia
"Gripping, frightening, swift as a bullet." Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times bestselling author
New York Times bestselling author Michelle Richmond introduces a tough and spirited new protagonist, FBI Agent Lina Connerly, in this exhilarating race to save Silicon Valley teens from their own parents’ ambition and greed.
"A high-spirited, riveting novel..." Anita Feliicelli for San Francisco Chronicle
"A gripping blend of danger and sharp social commentary on high-stakes education, the 1%, & suburban tropes." Booklist, starred review
Recommended for fans of Tana French, Sue Grafton, David Baldacci, Paula Hawkins, and Gillian Flynn. An Amazon Best Book of July
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"A sharply written, subtly satirical thriller." Publishers Weekly
"Chilling but heartwarming." Wall Street Journal
"Fluid, engaging." The New York Times
Meet Lina Connerly, the FBI agent at the heart of The Wonder Test:
She’s a profiler and counter-intelligence specialist, skilled at tradecraft, hand-to-hand combat, firearms, ocean swimming, fluent in French and Russian and can call in tech support from D.C. She’s a kind of new Wonder Woman. Don Noble for Alabama Public Radio
About The Wonder Test
Escaping New York City and the espionage case that made her question everything, recently widowed FBI agent Lina Connerly returns home to sell the house she has inherited in tony Greenfield, California. With her teenage son Rory, Lina hopes to reassemble her life, reevaluate her career, and find a clear way forward. Adrift and battling insomnia, she discovers that her father’s sleepy hometown has been transformed into a Silicon Valley suburb on steroids, obsessed with an annual exam called The Wonder Test.
When students at her son’s high school go missing, reappearing under mysterious circumstances on abandoned beaches, Lina must summon her strength and her investigative instincts, pushing her own ethical boundaries to the limits in order to solve the crimes. Meanwhile, an old espionage case called Red Vine keeps calling her back into the fold. While Lina struggles to balance her new role as a single mother and the complex counterintelligence puzzles she is so adept at solving, Greenfield’s shadowy dangers creep closer to her own home.
A searing view of a culture that puts the wellbeing of children at risk for advancement and prestige, and a captivating story of the lengths a mother will go for her son.
"A two-in-one winner: a gripping thriller set in a Stepford-esque California suburb, and a story of surviving loss and building family bonds. With a realistic protagonist, well-described setting, and an uber-creepy villain, it will please readers who like their stories with action and heart in equal measure.—Liz French, Library Journal
"The Wonder Test features a terrific, clever, and timely concept, and Lina Connerly, a loving mother, is also exactly the kind of tough-as-nails heroine to chase down the truth. Gripping, frightening, swift as a bullet. The last hundred pages could give you whiplash." Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times bestselling author
"A high-spirited, riveting novel. It combines the relentless, competitive pressure of growing up in affluent Silicon Valley suburbs with a future already coming round the bend. By blending the speculative and the familiar, Richmond makes us believe." Anita Feliicelli for San Francisco Chronicle
"Fast-paced and smart, thoughtful and full of heart...combines the thrilling twists of a Sue Grafton novel and the literary complexity of the best Tana French." Amanda Ward, New York Times bestselling author of The Jetsetters
"Like Stepford Wives but with Silicon Valley scions and their delusional dreams for their offspring, The Wonder Test blends a mystery with some tart social commentary...With the 1% gone wild and the no-nonsense FBI agent wading into crazytown to find out why, the scene is set for a sure-footed, darkly funny, semi-satirical thriller that never misses a beat." —Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review, Amazon Best Books of July
"The overlay of international spycraft on suburban California, whose shiny facade conceals the most heinous of sins and vanities, is surprisingly effective. The plot is sound, the action exciting, and the characters resoundingly human." Kirkus Reviews
"The Wonder Test deftly explores the underbelly of San Francisco, the pressures of Silicon Valley, and the love between a mother and her teenage son. I was captivated by the novel’s simultaneously tough and tender protagonist, FBI agent Lina Connerly, and the plot twists kept me riveted until the small hours of the morning. After this, I’ll read anything Michelle Richmond writes." —Vendela Vida, author of We Run the Tides
A fast-paced, moving exploration of motherhood & money, danger & deception, privilege & pretense...the perfect thinking person’s page-turner: smart, suspenseful, layered. I couldn’t put it down.” Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Mother May I
“The Wonder Test paints a rich, complex picture of the San Francisco Bay Area that both resonates with its natural beauty and captures the darker aspects of being the extremely privileged cyber capital of the world.”—Alice LaPlante, New York Times bestselling author of A Circle of Wives
Discussion questions for The Wonder Test
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Title: The Marriage Pact - the bestselling psychological thriller by Michelle Richmond
Publisher: Random House Books
Summary:
The bestselling psychological thriller that explores how far couples will go to save their marriage - now available in 31 languages
"A smart, searing, frightening look at modern love." Today
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"Very suspenseful...Compulsively readable" Bookriot
Newlyweds Jake and Alice are offered membership in an exclusive society that promises members will never divorce. Signing The Pact seems the ideal start to their marriage. Then one of them breaks the rules.
“The Marriage Pact ranks with GONE GIRL as a terrifying look at what it really means to say ‘I do.’”—Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of The Switch
"This fast-paced nail-biter...raises thoughtful questions about individual agency and marital commitment. A fresh voice for readers of Gillian Flynn or Ruth Ware." Library Journal, starred review
"Pacey, well-written and refreshingly unique, this is a very smart thriller." Heat Magazine
"A fun, can't-stop-eating-the-potato-chips premise..." The New York Times
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About THE MARRIAGE PACT
Newlyweds Alice and Jake are a picture-perfect couple. Alice, once a singer in a well-known rock band, is now a successful lawyer. Jake is a partner in an up-and-coming psychology practice. After receiving an enticing wedding gift from one of Alice’s prominent clients, they decide to join an exclusive and mysterious group known only as The Pact.
The goal of The Pact seems simple: to keep marriages happy and intact. And most of its rules make sense. Always answer the phone when your spouse calls. Exchange thoughtful gifts monthly. Plan a trip together once per quarter. . . .
Never mention The Pact to anyone.
Alice and Jake are initially seduced by the glamorous parties, the sense of community, their widening social circle of like-minded couples.
And then one of them breaks the rules.
The young lovers are about to discover that for adherents to The Pact, membership, like marriage, is for life. And The Pact will go to any lengths to enforce that rule. For Jake and Alice, the marriage of their dreams is about to become their worst nightmare.
From Michelle Richmond, the New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog.
Listen to the audiobook, winner of the Audiofile Earphones Award.
Available in 31 languages
Read Michelle's post, 5 Books to Read After The Marriage Pact
If you liked THE MARRIAGE PACT,
you'll love THE WONDER TEST, a Silicon Valley thriller about high-stakes testing, now in paperback
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Title: Golden State - the Novel
Publisher: Random House Books
Summary: “Mesmerizing and intricate, Richmond’s dissection of California on the violent brink of secession from the nation provides the backdrop for her deeper inspection of the fragile relationship between siblings…riveting.” Booklist, starred review of Golden State, the novel
"So imaginative, so heartfelt, so deftly made–a masterful braid of memory and urgency. Richmond is in top form, and has made a book of exquisite grace." Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less
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Winner of the Earphones Audio Award. Listen to an audiobook sample.
See other Michelle Richmond novels set in San Francisco.
About the Book
The state of California votes on secession in the wake of a divisive presidential election in this gripping, prescient novel of marriage, family, and social upheaval set in modern-day San Francisco.
Doctor Julie Walker, a general internist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Francisco, has just signed her divorce papers when she receives news that her younger sister, Heather, has gone into labor. Though theirs is a strained relationship, Julie sets out for the hospital to be at her sister’s side—no easy task since the streets of San Francisco have erupted into chaos. Today is the day that Californians are voting on whether or not to secede from the United States. It is also the day that Julie will find herself at the epicenter of a violent standoff with a former lover who has become obsessed with her.
Throughout the ordeal, Julie’s estranged husband, desperate for reconciliation, sends out coded messages from the radio station where he is the well-known Voice of Midnight.
The novel GOLDEN STATE takes readers on a journey over the course of a single, unforgettable day. It is both a literary thriller and a meditation on marriage, love, and loyalty. Like The Year of Fog, it is a page-turner with a philosophical bent.
Title: No One You Know
Publisher: Random House Books
Summary:
"Heartbreaking and compelling...a thoroughly riveting literary mystery." Booklist, starred review
"An intelligent, emotionally convincing tale about a family tragedy and the process of storytelling." The Boston Globe
"Richmond follows her compulsively readable The Year of Fog with an equally addictive encore." The Denver Post
About the Book
All her life Ellie Enderlin had been known as Lila’s sister. Until one day, without warning, the shape of their family changed forever. Twenty years ago, Lila, a top math student at Stanford, was murdered in a crime that was never solved. In the aftermath of her sister’s death, Ellie entrusted her most intimate feelings to a man who turned the story into a bestselling true crime book—a book that both devastated her family and identified one of Lila’s professors as the killer.
Decades later, two Americans meet in a remote village in Nicaragua. Ellie is now a professional coffee buyer, an inveterate traveler and incapable of trust. Peter is a ruined academic. And their meeting is not by chance. As rain beats down on the steaming rooftops of the village, Peter leaves Ellie with a gift—the notebook that Lila carried everywhere, a piece of evidence not found with her body. Stunned, Ellie will return home to San Francisco to explore the mysteries of Lila’s notebook, filled with mathematical equations, and begin a search that has been waiting for her all these years. It will lead her to a hundred-year-old mathematical puzzle, to a lover no one knew Lila had, to the motives and fate of the man who profited from their family’s anguish. A novel about the stories and lies that strangers, lovers and families tell—and the secrets we keep even from ourselves.
For fans of Alice Sebold, Kate Atkinson, and Gillian Flynn.
Title: The Year of Fog
Publisher: Random House Books
Summary:
The New York Times bestselling literary mystery about memory, obsession, and one woman's search for a missing child.
"Profound, deeply moving, endlessly gripping; you will devour it in a weekend and turn it over to begin again.” ~Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Less
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"I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. A missing child, a haunting neighborhood, a search for love…The Year of Fog has it all. Make a sandwich now: you won’t stop reading for hours." Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times bestselling author of TheJetsetters
"Wonderful...fascinating." The San Francisco Chronicle
"Mesmerizing and harrowing." London Daily Mail
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About the Book
Life changes in an instant. On a foggy San Francisco beach. In the seconds when Abby Mason—photographer, fiancée soon-to-be-stepmother—looks into her camera and commits her greatest error. Heartbreaking, uplifting, and beautifully told, here is the riveting tale of a family torn apart, of the search for the truth behind a child’s disappearance, and of one woman’s unwavering faith in the redemptive power of love.
Six-year-old Emma vanished into the thick San Francisco fog. Or into the heaving Pacific. Or somewhere just beyond: to a parking lot, a stranger’s van, or a road with traffic flashing by. Devastated by guilt, haunted by her fears about becoming a stepmother, Abby refuses to believe that Emma is dead. And so she searches for clues about what happened that morning—and cannot stop the flood of memories reaching from her own childhood to illuminate that irreversible moment on the beach.
Now, as the days drag into weeks, as the police lose interest and fliers fade on telephone poles, Emma’s father finds solace in religion and scientific probability—but Abby can only wander the beaches and city streets, attempting to recover the past and the little girl she lost. With her life at a crossroads, she will leave San Francisco for a country thousands of miles away. And there, by the side of another sea, on a journey that has led her to another man and into a strange subculture of wanderers and surfers, Abby will make the most astounding discovery of all—as the truth of Emma’s disappearance unravels with stunning force.
A profoundly original novel of family, loss, and hope—of the choices we make and the choices made for us—The Year of Fog, now in its 31st printing, is a classic literary mystery set in San Francisco, a tour de force about memory, forgetting, love, and forgiveness.
- A Kirkus Reviews Top Pick for Reading Groups
- A New York Times bestseller
- A Washington Post "A List" book
- Best Books of the Year, Library Journal & News of the World
- A San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book
- An official selection of Silicon Valley Reads
Get the book: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Bookshop.org / AudibleTitle: Dream of the Blue Room
Publisher: Random House Books
Summary: Jenny and Amanda Ruth were best friends in a small Alabama town until eighteen-years-old Amanda Ruth was murdered. Now, fourteen years later, Jenny has traveled with her husband to China to scatter Amanda Ruth’s ashes and finally fulfill her friend’s dream of visiting her Chinese father’s homeland. It’s also, Jenny hopes, an opportunity to repair her own troubled marriage. But as she journeys through a foreign landscape, the guilty secrets of Jenny’s past rise up and her life will be inexorably altered.
Title: The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Summary:
Winner of the Grace Paley Prize for Fiction
The stories in Michelle Richmond’s debut collection spin artfully off the life of a single character. Smart & adept.
The New York Times Book Review
A series of locations both familiar and exotic make up the seventeen linked stories in this award-winning debut collection by the New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Fog. Whether leaving, returning, or staying put, the women who narrate these stories are bound to Alabama by history and habit, their voices informed by the landscape and lore of the deep South.
In "Down the Shore Everything's All Right," twenty-eight-year-old Grace abandons wide Southern beaches for New York sidewalks, only to discover that the Gulf Coast still has a hold on her. In "Intermittent Waves of Unusual Size and Force," a wayward father is called home from California by a massive hurricane that threatens the lives of his family. In "The World's Greatest Pants," three younger sisters watch in awe as Darlene, the eldest and bravest, defies her parents and heads for Texas in a battered El Camino.
An undercurrent of eroticism runs through the collection. "Propaganda" finds the youngest sister alone in an old house in Knoxville, where she forms a symbiotic relationship with a mysterious upstairs neighbor during her husband's lengthy absence. In "Fifth Grade: A Criminal History," adolescence and sexuality merge with explosive consequences.
The divine and the absurd are uneasy but frequent bedfellows in these stories. "O-lama-lama" portrays a religious free-for-all at a beachside church in Fairhope, Alabama, while "Slacabamorinico" celebrates the holy commotion of Mardi Gras at a Mobile cemetery. In "The Last Bad Thing," a love-struck young woman in the Bible Belt is haunted by visions of Ramadan.
A valuable resource for students of short fiction, this collection will also delight fans of Richmond's later books: The Year of Fog, No One You Know, Dream of the Blue Room, and the award-winning story collection HUM.Title: HUM book by Michelle Richmond
Publisher: Fiction Collective 2
Summary: HUM. Winner of the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize and the Truman Capote Prize. Foreword by Rikki Ducornet
"Hum is disquieting and masterful, emblematic of a book given over to the study of couplings come undone...these stories are wonderfully strange, a strangeness both compelling and convincing." Rikki Ducornet
Thirteen years after the publication of her award-winning story collection, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, Michelle Richmond returns to the short story form with Hum, a collection of eleven stories that examine love, lust, and loyalty from surprising angles.
“You can’t hide from Michelle Richmond. She knows your secrets, she gets under your skin. Few writers expose the mysteries of relationships–and love itself–as cannily, and with as much honest and deadly humor. Each story is a unique and unexpected journey...Hum is an exceptional collection.” Peter Orner, author of Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridgeand Esther Stories
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