The New Book From "One of the brightest new stars of literary suspense" (LA Times)

Don't Breathe a Word

On a soft summer night in Vermont, twelve-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother, Sam, about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen.


Fifteen years later, Phoebe is in love with Sam, a practical, sensible man who doesn’t fear the dark and doesn’t have bad dreams—who, in fact, helps Phoebe ignore her own. But suddenly the couple is faced with a series of eerie, unexplained occurrences that challenge Sam’s hardheaded, realistic view of the world. As they question their reality, a terrible promise Sam made years ago is revealed—a promise that could destroy them all.

April says:
"I've been trying for days to find a way to explain this 'unputdownable' novel.

Don't Breathe a Word is about one summer in the lives of Lisa and Phoebe.  Those summers just happen to be fifteen years apart from one another.  Oh, and the characters have never met each other.

Told in an addictive episodic manner, Lisa, who disappeared fifteen years ago, and Phoebe create a world where fairies are the antithesis of Tinkerbell.  They are dark creatures, who will go to any length to get from you what they want; and once you are linked to them, they will never let you go.

This novel scared me.  McMahon's light hand on this easily cliched topic made this book believable and her narrator is so trustworthy.  She knots familial ties to familial legends to the truth and then buries it all in the backyard so no one will ever believe the characters.  And then convinces you that you might not even believe them yourself. "