Books by Rea Frey
Not Her Daughter: A Novel
by Rea Frey
Gripping, emotional, and wire-taut, Rea Frey's Not Her Daughter raises the question of what it means to be a mother―and how far someone will go to keep a child safe.
"Brings to mind Jodi Picoult...thought-provoking domestic drama." - Booklist
“Will make you miss your bedtime, guaranteed.” – Bestselling author Kimberly Belle
Emma Townsend. Five years old. Gray eyes, brown hair. Missing since June.
Emma is lonely. Living with her cruel mother and clueless father, Emma retreats into her own world of quiet and solitude.
Sarah Walker. Successful entrepreneur. Broken-hearted. Kidnapper.
Sarah has never seen a girl so precious as the gray-eyed child in a crowded airport terminal. When a second-chance encounter with Emma presents itself, Sarah takes her―far away from home. But if it’s to rescue a little girl from her damaging mother, is kidnapping wrong?
Amy Townsend. Unhappy wife. Unfit mother. Unsure whether she wants her daughter back.
Amy’s life is a string of disappointments, but her biggest issue is her inability to connect with her daughter. And now Emma is gone without a trace.
As Sarah and Emma avoid the nationwide hunt, they form an unshakeable bond. But what about Emma’s real mother, back at home?
PopSugar – The Summer’s Hottest Books * Refinery 29 - Best Summer Thrillers * US Weekly - Summer's Best Send-Offs * Parade - 20 Chilling Thrillers by Women to Read This Year * Brit + Co - 15 New Thrillers by Women That Will Give You Chills This Summer * The Zoe Report – 20 Books to Read this Summer * She Reads - New Summer Thrillers to Get Your Heart Racing * Working Mother - 15 Hot New Summer Beach Reads * Culturalist - Top Ten Domestic Thrillers That Will Make You Question Everything * Crime Reads - 5 Debut Crime Novels to Read This August
Copies
No copies available.
Because You're Mine: A Novel
by Rea Frey
An “insidious, suspenseful tale” (J.T. Ellison) with a “shocker of an ending you won’t see coming” (Michele Campbell), Because You're Mine by Rea Frey, the author who “brings to mind Jodi Picoult” (Booklist) and “will appeal to readers of Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen” (Sally Hepworth) is a novel about how the truth will set you free.
But it’s the lies that keep you safe.
Single mother Lee has the daily routine down to a science: shower in six minutes. Cut food into perfect squares. Never leave her on-the-spectrum son Mason in someone else’s care. She’ll do anything―anything―to keep his carefully constructed world from falling apart. Do anything to keep him safe.
But when her best friend Grace convinces her she needs a small break from motherhood to recharge her batteries, Lee gives in to a weekend trip. Surely a long weekend away from home won’t hurt?
Noah, Mason’s handsome, bright, charismatic tutor―the first man in ages Lee’s even noticed―is more than happy to stay with him.
Forty-eight hours later, someone is dead.
But not all is as it seems. Noah may be more than who he claims to be. Grace has a secret―one that will destroy Lee. Lee has secrets of her own that she will do anything to keep hidden. And what will happen to Mason, as the dominoes begin to fall and the past comes to light?
Perhaps it's no mystery someone is gone after all…
Because You're Mine is a breathtaking novel of domestic drama and suspense.
Prepare to stay up all night.
Copies
No copies available.
Until I Find You
by John Irving, Rea Frey
Until I Find You is the story of the actor Jack Burns – his life, loves, celebrity and astonishing search for the truth about his parents.
When he is four years old, Jack travels with his mother Alice, a tattoo artist, to several North Sea ports in search of his father, William Burns. From Copenhagen to Amsterdam, William, a brilliant church organist and profligate womanizer, is always a step ahead – has always just departed in a wave of scandal, with a new tattoo somewhere on his body from a local master or “scratcher.”
Alice and Jack abandon their quest, and Jack is educated at schools in Canada and New England – including, tellingly, a girls’ school in Toronto. His real education consists of his relationships with older women – from Emma Oastler, who initiates him into erotic life, to the girls of St. Hilda’s, with whom he first appears on stage, to the abusive Mrs. Machado, whom he first meets when sent to learn wrestling at a local gym.
Too much happens in this expansive, eventful novel to possibly summarize it all. Emma and Jack move to Los Angeles, where Emma becomes a successful novelist and Jack a promising actor. A host of eccentric minor characters memorably come and go, including Jack’s hilariously confused teacher the Wurtz; Michelle Maher, the girlfriend he will never forget; and a precocious child Jack finds in the back of an Audi in a restaurant parking lot. We learn about tattoo addiction and movie cross-dressing, “sleeping in the needles” and the cure for cauliflower ears. And John Irving renders his protagonist’s unusual rise through Hollywood with the same vivid detail and range of emotions he gives to the organ music Jack hears as a child in European churches. This is an absorbing and moving book about obsession and loss, truth and storytelling, the signs we carry on us and inside us, the traces we can’t get rid of.
Jack has always lived in the shadow of his absent father. But as he grows older – and when his mother dies – he starts to doubt the portrait of his father’s character she painted for him when he was a child. This is the cue for a second journey around Europe in search of his father, from Edinburgh to Switzerland, towards a conclusion of great emotional force.
A melancholy tale of deception, Until I Find Youis also a swaggering comic novel, a giant tapestry of life’s hopes. It is a masterpiece to compare with John Irving’s great novels, and restates the author’s claim to be considered the most glorious, comic, moving novelist at work today.
Copies
No copies available.
Until I Find You
by John Irving, Rea Frey
In Until I Find You, celebrated author Rea Frey brings you her most explosive, emotional, taut domestic drama yet about the powerful bond between mothers and children…and how far one woman will go to bring her son home.
"Frey is a rising star in the suspense scene" - Booklist
2 floors. 55 steps to go up. 40 more to the crib.
Since Rebecca Gray was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease, everything in her life consists of numbers. Each day her world grows a little darker and each step becomes a little more dangerous.
Following days of feeling like someone’s watching her, Rebecca awakes at home to the cries of her son in his nursery. When it’s clear he’s not going to settle, Rebecca goes to check on him.
She reaches in. Picks him up.
But he’s not her son.
And no one believes her.
One woman’s desperate search for her son . . .
In a world where seeing is believing, Rebecca must rely on her own conviction and a mother’s instinct to uncover the truth about what happened to her baby and bring him home for good.
"Completely captivating, utterly compelling...a must read!" - Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke, authors of The Two Lila Bennetts
Copies
No copies available.
Secrets of Our House
by Rea Frey
A thrilling domestic drama set against the power of the wilderness, Rea Frey's Secrets of Our House is a deeply-felt novel of long-held secrets and the strength of family.
Desi is the mastermind behind her dream getaway house. Nestled high into the mountains of North Carolina, it is a sleek place, a luxurious place, a dark place.
A place full of secrets.
Secrets about the man she longs for, a man who is not her husband. Secrets about the roots of her family that must never, ever, see the light of day. When Desi and her family arrive from Chicago to spend the summer in the mountains, the seeds for the tumultuous months to follow are planted―her marriage on the rocks, not knowing which way they’ll go. Her seventeen year-old daughter Jules, falling in love for the first time with a local boy―and forging a new path that will take her to uncharted places. And Carter―a man Desi knew long ago, before she expunged him from her life for good.
All hurtling toward events none of them can undo.
Engaging, propulsive, and with a dramatic, heart-pounding final act, Secrets of Our House is a dazzling novel, richly-drawn, that shows no matter how hard outside forces may shake you, the bonds of family are stronger than the harshest winds.
Copies
No copies available.
In Every Life
by Marla Frazee, Rea Frey
What happens when a husband's dying wish is for his wife to find a new love . . . before he's even gone?
Ben and Harper have had a rough start to their marriage. After a surprise late-stage cancer diagnosis, Ben comes up with one final wish for his wife: he wants Harper to find a new partner before he dies. Harper is resistant to this wacky plan. If she can't have Ben, then she doesn't want anyone. Finally, he lets it drop, but not before the New York Times sends a journalist to do a feature story about Ben's life . . . and his idea. When Harper opens the door, she is stunned to find the one man who got away. Or, the man she spent one perfect week with a decade ago and never saw again: Liam Hale.
Suddenly, Harper is faced with her ultimate what-if:
What if Harper had ended up with Liam instead of Ben?
What if she'd pursued life as an artist instead of teaching?
What if it had all turned out differently?
After making a wish, Harper wakes up to find herself in a parallel universe . . . where her what-ifs become a reality.
Is the grass really greener, or is she standing right where she should be, even as she inevitably faces the pain of losing the one she loves?
Copies
-
$18.99
In Every Life
by Marla Frazee, Rea Frey
This Caldecott Honor picture book is a simple and profound meditation on the many wonders of life from three-time Caldecott Honor recipient Marla Frazee.
In every life, there is love and loss, hope and joy, wonder and mystery. With glowing art and spare, powerful text, Caldecott Honor–winning creator Marla Frazee celebrates the moments, feelings, and experiences, both big and small, that make up a life.
Copies
-
$18.99
The Other Year
by Rea Frey
2023 Target Book of the Year Finalist
Perfect for fans of Rebecca Serle's One Italian Summer and Josie Silver's The Two Lives of Lydia Bird.
Can the entire course of a life be traced back to a single instant? And can hope be found in every moment after?
On a coveted two-week beach vacation, working mom Kate Baker's nine-year-old daughter, Olivia, vanishes suddenly among the waves--a heart-dropping incident that threatens to uproot her entire reality. But in the next moment, Olivia resurfaces, joyously splashing.
What would I do if she didn't come up? Kate wonders. How would I live without her?
In another set of circumstances that hold a different fate, Kate doesn't have to wonder. Because in that "other" world, in the pulse-pounding seconds after Olivia goes under, she doesn't come back up.
Told in parallel timelines, Kate begins to live two lives--one in which Olivia resurfaces and one in which she doesn't. In the reality that follows her daughter's death, she maneuvers through every mother's worst nightmare, facing grief, rage, and the question of purpose in the aftermath of such profound loss. She endures, day by day, in a world without her daughter.
In her alternate timeline, while she explores a tremulous romance with her best friend, Jason, she finds herself grappling with the ex-husband who abandoned Kate and Olivia years prior. Even as Kate scrambles to hold her daughter close, Olivia pulls further away. The line between joy and loss seems to get thinner with each passing day.
Woven into a single story, both Kates discover a breathtaking fragility and resilience in their respective journeys. Bringing to light the drastic polarities dire circumstances often create, The Other Year explores truths about love, loss, and the sharp turns any life can take in the blink of an eye.
"In this world-altering women's fiction novel, single mother Kate Baker looks away for a single moment, only to lose sight of her daughter in the ocean. As a result, her world splits into two separate realities: one where she gets to keep being a mother and the other where she doesn't. The message is clear: Love your people. A tear-jerker with heart." --Brenda Novak, New York Times bestselling author
"Tenderly observed and heartfelt. Raw and emotional. The Other Year is sure to strike a chord with readers everywhere." --Josie Silver, New York Times bestselling author Contemporary women's fiction Stand-alone novel Book length: 95,000 words Includes discussion questions for book clubs
Copies
-
$17.99