Concrete Angel - Softcover

Praise for CONCRETE ANGEL: "With cool, compelling prose, CONCRETE ANGEL reveals the menace that lurks beneath a mother's charming facade. An absorbing novel by an unusually fine writer." --Meg Gardiner, Edgar Award-winning author of CHINA LAKE andTHE MEMORY COLLECTOR "(An) enthralling, dark debut novel...It's a potent and at times poignant combination. Those who enjoy suspenseful, atmospheric family drama will find much to love here." --Library Journal (starred review) "Christine's mother Eve is sharp, beautiful, charismatic... and a murderous sociopath. Their complicated and heartbreaking relationship is explored in CONCRETE ANGEL -- a riveting depiction of family ties and how they can bind, ensnare, strangle." --Alison Gaylin, USA Today bestselling author "CONCRETE ANGEL is debut novelist Patti Abbott's exquisitely rendered character study of a manipulative mother over two decades. Eve is a woman obsessed -- but how will our narrator, Eve's only daughter, respond as her childhood innocence is taken away? Abbott exhibits a pitch-perfect precision with both language and setting in capturing the tragic world of a mid-century Pennsylvania family." --Edgar Award-winning author Naomi Hirahara "This is a gripping psychological thriller...will draw fans of the late Ruth Rendell as well as Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train." --Booklist "A fresh, original voice telling a story that's probably, in broad outline if not detail, more common than we know. But what detail! From the opening sentence, a grabber." --SJ Rozan, Edgar-winning author (as Sam Cabot) of SKIN OF THE WOLF "The characters in Abbott's debut novel are fully realized." --Kirkus Reviews "CONCRETE ANGEL is a culmination of her very best and is not to be missed." --Criminal Element "It's one of these novels that makes it so easy to turn the pages that it'll keep you under its spell past dinner and bed time." --Dead End Follies "CONCRETE ANGEL is a noir novel unlike anything you've ever read. Abbott has a new voice that's both chilling and shocking." --Sandra Scoppetone, award-winning author of the Lauren Laurano series

Nominated for the Anthony and Macavity Award Evil doesn't always live next door. Sometimes it lives right in your own home. Eve Moran has always wanted "things," her powers of seduction impossible to resist for those who come in contact with her toxic allure. And over the course of her life, she has proven both inventive and tenacious in getting and keeping whatever such things catch her eye, whether they are jewelry, money, or men. Eve lies, steals, cheats, swindles, and is even willing to take a life, paying little heed to the cost of her actions on those who love her and depend on her. Her daughter, Christine, compelled by love, dependency, and circumstance, is caught up in her mother's deceptions, unwilling to accept the viciousness that runs in her family's blood. It's only when Christine's three-year old brother, Ryan, begins to prove useful to her mother, and Christine sees a horrific pattern repeating itself, that she finds the courage and means to bring an end to Eve's tyranny. Concrete Angel centers around a family torn apart by a mother straight out of "Mommie Dearest", and her resilient young daughter who discovers that survival can mean fighting the closest evil imaginable.