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NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES! A secret destroys a man’s perfect life and sends him on a collision course with a deadly conspiracy in this shocking thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben. The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar, or a parking lot, or at the grocery store. Their identity is unknown. Their motives are unclear. Their information is undeniable. Then they whisper a few words in your ear and disappear, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world... Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American Dream: a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life. Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne's deception, and realizes that if he doesn't make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives—it will end them.
NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES! A secret destroys a man’s perfect life and sends him on a collision course with a deadly conspiracy in this shocking thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Harlan Coben. The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar, or a parking lot, or at the grocery store. Their identity is unknown. Their motives are unclear. Their information is undeniable. Then they whisper a few words in your ear and disappear, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world... Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American Dream: a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life. Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne's deception, and realizes that if he doesn't make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he’s stumbled into will not only ruin lives—it will end them.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
The stranger didn’t shatter Adam’s world all at once.
That was what Adam Price would tell himself later, but that was a lie. Adam somehow knew right away, right from the very first sentence, that the life he had known as a content suburban married father of two was forever gone. It was a simple sentence on the face of it, but there was something in the tone, something knowing and even caring, that let Adam know that nothing would ever be the same.
“You didn’t have to stay with her,” the stranger said.
They were in the American Legion Hall in Cedarfield, New Jersey. Cedarfield was a town loaded up with wealthy hedge fund managers and bankers and other financial masters-of-the-universe types. They liked to drink beer in the American Legion Hall be- cause it was comfortable slumming, a way to pretend that they were salt-of-the-earth good ol’ boys, like something in a Dodge Ram commercial, when they were anything but.
Adam stood by the sticky bar. There was a dartboard behind him. Neon signs advertised Miller Lite, but Adam had a bottle of Budweiser in his right hand. He turned to the man, who had just sidled up to him, and even though Adam already knew the answer, he asked the man, “Are you talking to me?”
The guy was younger than most of the fathers, thinner, almost gaunt, with big, piercing blue eyes. His arms were white and reedy with a hint of a tattoo showing beneath one of the short sleeves. He was wearing a baseball cap. He wasn’t quite a hipster, but there was something of a wonk attitude coming off him, like some guy who ran a tech department and never saw the sun.
The piercing blue eyes held Adam’s with an earnestness that made him want to turn away. “She told you she was pregnant, right?”
Adam felt his grip on the bottle tighten.
“That’s why you stayed. Corinne told you she was pregnant.”
It was right then that Adam felt some kind of switch go off in his chest, as if someone had tripped the red digital timer on some movie bomb and now it had started to tick down. Tick, tick, tick, tick.
“Do I know you?” Adam asked.
“She told you she was pregnant,” the stranger continued. “Corinne, I mean. She told you she was pregnant and then she lost the baby.”
The American Legion Hall was loaded up with town dads sporting those white baseball T-shirts with the three-quarter sleeves and either baggy cargo shorts or perfectly no-assed Dad jeans. Lots of them wore baseball caps. Tonight was the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth- grade boys’ lacrosse draft and A-team selections. If you ever wanted to witness type As behaving as such in their natural habitat, Adam thought, watch when parents get involved in their own offsprings’ team selections.
The Discovery Channel should film this.
“You felt obligated to stay, am I right?” the man asked. “I don’t know who the hell—”
“She lied, Adam.” The younger man spoke with such conviction, not just as though he knew for certain but that, at the end of the day, he had Adam’s best interest at heart. “Corinne made it all up. She was never pregnant.”
The words kept landing like punches, dazing Adam, sapping his resistance, leaving...
Reviews-
February 9, 2015 Bestseller Coben (Missing You) continues to turn out thrillers that put highly original spins on a current trend or problem, and while this standalone lacks the nail-biting suspense of his best, it's clever enough to be thoroughly entertaining. Adam Price, wife Corinne, and sons Ryan and Thomas are living the suburban dream in Cedarfield, N.J. Then, at a bar in Cedarfield's American Legion Hall, a man known only as the stranger reveals to Adam a secret of Corinne's that shatters the dream and causes Corinne to disappear. The stranger similarly imparts devastating secrets to Heidi Dann, a middle-aged woman with a family in Beachwood, Ohio, and Michaela Siegel, a medical student in New York City. Price shifts his search efforts from Corrine to the stranger, who is also being pursued by some extremely nasty characters. Lives and reputations are lost along the way. Even when not at his best, Coben is very good, and readers won't be disappointed. Agent: Lisa Erbach Vance, Aaron Priest Literary Agency.
February 15, 2015 Another one of Coben's got-it-all New Jersey dads finds out that his wonderful wife has been hiding a whopper of a secret from him-a secret whose trail leads to even more monstrous revelations."We're living the dream," Tripp Evans assures Adam Price at their sons' sixth-grade lacrosse all-star team draft-lacrosse, for crying out loud. But the dream is already slipping from Adam's grasp as Tripp speaks. Minutes earlier, a young stranger who declined to give his name had sidled up to Adam and informed him that his wife had faked her first pregnancy, which had supposedly ended in a miscarriage. When an agonized Adam confronts Corinne with the story, she doesn't deny it. Instead, she pleads for more time and promises that she'll tell all over a restaurant dinner the following day. Adam, who's clearly never read anything by Coben (Missing You, 2014, etc.), agrees, and Corinne checks out of her high school teaching job and vanishes, pausing just long enough to text Adam: "YOU TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS. DON'T TRY TO CONTACT ME. IT WILL BE OKAY." Days pass, and it's not OK. Adam's two boys (are they really even his? should he run DNA tests?) keep asking where their mom is. There's no word from Corinne, who won't answer Adam's texts. Her cellphone places her somewhere near Pittsburgh. Rumors about her start to percolate through the lacrosse league. And, although it'll take Adam quite a while to find this out, a murder in far-off Ohio has implications for Corinne's disappearance even more disturbing than anything Adam's imagined. Coben can always be relied on to generate thrills from the simplest premises, but his finest tales maintain a core of logic throughout the twists. This 100-proof nightmare ranks among his most potent.
March 1, 2015 In this stand-alone thriller, Coben once again mines the potential of contemporary technology to destroy lives. In this case, the cookie trail we leave behind on the Internet with our purchases, searches, e-mails, and texts reverses the Hansel and Gretel story, where their crumbs were supposed to lead to their rescue. Instead, our cookies can lead predators to us. Coben presents several narratives on this theme, with the plight of one suburban dad the central story. Adam Price has a high-paid job, a beautiful wife, and two teen sons in a small New Jersey town. One day, a stranger informs Price that Price's wife faked her last, unsuccessful pregnancy, providing a site to check out. Once Price confronts his wife with his hard-won Internet evidence, she skips town. Coben spikes Price's search for his wife with more chilling examples of the stranger blackmailing others who have left virtual tracks. The conceptual hook here is a stunner. Much of the book is exciting, but it would be more exciting at about half the length, and the ending, in which the chatty bad guy helps reveal his motives and methods, will strike some as ludicrous. A good run that stops short of the finish line. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Coben's track record as a consistent New York Times best-selling author and as winner of the Edgar, Anthony, and Shamus Awards ensures a mega-audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)
October 15, 2014
Marriage is not bliss when Adam and Hannah confront the terrible secret on which their entire relationship is based, leaving Adam fearful that he's never really known his wife. With seven consecutive No. 1 New York Times best sellers, Coben looks rock-solid on this one. With a five-city tour.
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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