Girl Unknown - Hardcover

"Check your passport and bolt the door . . . Girl Unknown gets its hooks in."
--Entertainment Weekly, "Winter's Chilliest New Thrillers"

"Emotional fireworks."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Full of intrigue and incident--keeps us guessing until the very last tragic page."
--Liz Nugent, bestselling author of Unraveling Oliver and of Lying in Wait

"Compulsively readable, with surprises until the very last page. . . . A chilling tale about a family under threat from one of its own."
--Jessica Treadway, author of Lacy Eye and How Will I Know You?

"[Girl Unknown] is must-read literary suspense, with dueling character perspectives and sly twists forming a gut-wrenching exploration of trust, manipulation, and obsession."
--Booklist (starred review)

"A convincing glimpse into the fragility of family life and the terrible burden that the past can put on domestic life."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Builds to an incredibly tense finale--before delivering an amazing final twist. Riveting stuff."
--Sunday Mirror

"Richly satisfying . . . a book that hooks the reader from the first page. The tension is relentlessly dialed up to an almost unbearable level as the story unfolds."
--The Irish Independent

Girl Unknown by critically acclaimed author Karen Perry is a powerful novel that “Explores emotional danger with relentless, surgical accuracy.”
—Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of The Trespasser and In the Woods

David and Caroline Connolly are swimming successfully through their marriage’s middle years—raising two children; overseeing care for David’s ailing mother; leaning into their careers, both at David’s university teaching job, where he’s up for an important promotion, and at the ad agency where Caroline has recently returned to work after years away while the children were little. The recent stresses of home renovation and of a brief romantic betrayal (Caroline’s) are behind them. The Connollys know and care for each other deeply.

Then one early fall afternoon, a student of sublime, waiflike beauty appears in David’s university office and says, “I think you might be my father.” And the fact of a youthful passion that David had tried to forget comes rushing back. In the person of this intriguing young woman, the Connollys may have a chance to expand who they are and how much they can love, or they may be making themselves vulnerable to menace. They face either an opportunity or a threat—but which is which? What happens when their hard-won family happiness meets a hard-luck beautiful girl?