It’s an idyllic New England summer, and Sadie is a precocious only child on the edge of adolescence. It seems like July and August will pass lazily by, just as they have every year before. But one day, Sadie and her best friend play a seemingly harmless prank on a neighborhood girl. Soon after, that same little girl disappears from a backyard barbecue—and she is never seen again.

Twenty years pass, and Sadie is still living in the same, quiet suburb. She’s married to a good man, has two beautiful children, and seems to have put her past behind her. But when a boy from her old neighborhood returns to town, the nightmares of that summer begin to resurface, and its unsolved mysteries finally become clear…

Little Sinners and Other Stories earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which raved, “Brown has a talent for evocative detail, but her ability to explore the perversities of memory and desire in haunting prose is her greatest strength.” Now, with this riveting debut, Brown proves herself a masterful writer of page-turning psychological suspense.