Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Kill Your Darlings

A Novel

ebook
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: Available soon
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: Available soon

"A dazzlingly clever murder mystery, told backwards, asking the question: why would this loving wife murder her husband?"—Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Famous Last Words and Wrong Place Wrong Time

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Kind Worth Killing and Eight Perfect Murders comes an inventive, utterly propulsive murder-mystery in reverse, tracing a marriage back in time to uncover the dark secret at its heart.

Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. They live in a beautiful Victorian on the north shore of Massachusetts. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well...except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.

What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom's marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple's lives—their fiftieth birthday party, buying their home, Jason's birth, the mysterious death of a work colleague—all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago.

Eventually we learn the details of what Thom and Wendy did in their early twenties, a secret that has kept them bound together through the length of their marriage. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Accessibility

    The publisher provides the following statement about the accessibility of the EPUB file supplied to OverDrive. Experiences may vary across reading systems. After borrowing the book, you may download the EPUB files to read in another reading system.

    Summary

    This title is a well-marked up and structured book, and accessible as defined by WCAG 2.0 Level A requirements.

    Ways Of Reading

    • Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and font size, spaces between paragraphs, sentences, words, and letters, as well as color of background and text).

    • Not all of the content will be readable as read aloud speech or dynamic braille.

    • Has alternative text descriptions for images.

    Conformance

    • The publication contains a conformance statement that it meets the EPUB Accessibility and WCAG 2 Level A standard.

    • The certifier's credential is Verified and Validated by Harpercollins, Inc..

    • This publication claims to meet EPUB Accessibility 1.0 WCAG 2.0 Level A.

    Navigation

    • Table of contents to all chapters of the text via links.

    • Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation.

    Additional Information

    • Page breaks included

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      April 1, 2025

      In bestselling Swanson's (Nine Lives) latest, Wendy wants to murder her husband of 25 years. The story of their dissolving marriage is told in reverse, revealing her motive and their shared secret. With a 150K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2025 Library Journal

      Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Booklist

      May 1, 2025
      Wendy is seriously thinking about murdering her husband. She and Thom have grown so far apart that they've remained married just out of habit . . . and out of a shared tragedy. How did they get to this point? And is there any way to resolve the tension except with one of them dying? Swanson's latest novel is, structurally, his most ambitious: the story is told backwards, starting in the present day and moving back through time, revealing hidden truths, lies, and the one terrible secret Wendy and Thom share, the terrible thing that has kept them together for all these decades. Like in Gillian McAllister's Wrong Place Wrong Time, 2022, Swanson picks his back-in-time moments carefully: each time we see Wendy and Thom, we see them at a key moment in their relationship; and, as their past opens up to us, we slowly see a tragic picture developing. With a pair of deeply engaging characters, a unique story structure, and a powerhouse of an ending, the book is a sure-fire hit.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      May 1, 2025
      A backward-chronology thriller tells the story of a marriage in order to tell the story of a woman's plan to murder her husband. The novel begins in 2023 with the words, "The first attempt at killing her husband was the night of the dinner party." The aspiring murderer is Wendy Graves, once a promising poet. What's making Wendy murderous? Well, she and her English professor husband, Thom, who teaches at a state university in Massachusetts, were hosting a dinner for his colleagues when he divulged to everyone present that he was writing a murder mystery. This was news to Wendy, who slipped into Thom's office mid-party to look on his laptop, where she found a worrisome Word document: "Thom was writing some version of their own story, a story they had agreed wasnever to be shared with anyone." What, exactly, istheir story? The novel toggles between Wendy's and Thom's points of view as the saga of their marriage unfolds in reverse; the plot hits on key events going all the way back to 1982, when Wendy and Thom met as teenagers. Although Swanson takes his time setting up and playing out pivotal scenes, his book is flab-free; a naturalistic-seeming detail in one chapter ends up having a significance that's brought to light in a later (which is to say chronologically earlier) chapter. That the novel is both a meditation on comeuppance and a steely nail-biter jibes with Thom's regularly reported tastes in books and movies: Over the years, his loyalties seem to be evenly split between the literary and the spine-tingling. If Swanson can be said to be pinching from one of Thom's favorite film noirs, it's with total awareness and to sublime effect. A heady, allusive, tweedy-seedy slow burn.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

Loading