The Receptionist

“Kate Myles takes no prisoners and leaves no skin on the bone. The Receptionist is a riveting and disturbing evisceration of twenty-first-century Hollywood greed and ambition. Überagents, self-improvement gurus, desperately ambitious actors—none of these denizens of sun-drenched Los Angeles are safe from Kate Myles’s scalpel-sharp pen.” —Christopher Rice, New York Times and Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Burning Girl series

“A dark, gripping tale that won’t fail to captivate.” —Robert Bryndza, New York Times bestselling author

“The Receptionist is the best kind of guilty pleasure. Unlikeable characters? Check. Twisty plot? Check. This book has a pervasive sense of dread throughout, which made me turn the pages even faster. I couldn’t wait to see how it ended.” —Samantha Downing, USA Today bestselling author of My Lovely Wife and He Started It

“The Receptionist is compulsively readable and deliciously disturbing, perfect for readers who enjoyed Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Myles has written a genuinely unnerving thriller that I couldn’t put down.” —Jess Lourey, Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things and Bloodline

“The Receptionist starts as a scathingly funny, deftly observed comedy of Hollywood manners—then twists, changes gears, and gathers the tense, heart-palpitating momentum of a runaway train.” —Jon Evans, Arthur Ellis Award–winning author of Dark Places and Invisible Armies

“Kate Myles’s The Receptionist is a terrific thriller and a mesmerizing character study; I read it faster and with more pleasure than any crime novel I’ve picked up in months.” —Scott Phillips, bestselling author of The Ice Harvest

“The Receptionist is a freight train, hurtling toward a sheer drop. Kate Myles’s razor-edged debut offers a bitter satire of LA society (or lack of same), told with the pure, pulse-pounding abandon of a 911 call. Myles’s villains are delightfully awful, and her dialogue shines bright and cuts deep, but what makes her a tale spinner on par with the greats, like Patricia Highsmith and Tana French, is her recognition that the most thrilling moment of that fatal train ride comes not from the pounding of the engines or the fiery conflagration of landing but from the moment of weightlessness as you fall.” —Nick Seeley, author of Cambodia Noir