Synopses & Reviews
From the New York Times bestselling author of Midwives and The Sandcastle Girls comes
the spellbinding tale of a party gone horribly wrong: two men lie dead
in a suburban living room, two women are on the run from police, and a
marriage is ripping apart at the seams.
When Kristin Chapman
agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother’s bachelor party,
she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She brings their young
daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to
the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is this:
bacchanalian drunkenness, her husband sharing a dangerously intimate
moment in the guest room, and two women stabbing and killing their
Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night.
In the
aftermath, Kristin and Richard’s life rapidly spirals into nightmare.
The police throw them out of their home, now a crime scene, Richard’s
investment banking firm puts him on indefinite leave, and Kristin is
unsure if she can forgive her husband for the moment he shared with a
dark-haired girl in the guest room. But the dark-haired girl, Alexandra,
faces a much graver danger. In one breathless, violent night, she is
free, running to escape the police who will arrest her and the gangsters
who will kill her in a heartbeat. A captivating, chilling story about
shame and scandal, The Guest Room is a riveting novel from one of our greatest storytellers.
Review
“Reads like a thriller…I did not see the end coming.
Chris does a terrific job of exploring the very dark side of
trafficking and the women who are preyed on…Lots to discuss, and book
clubs should take note.” Carol Fitzgerald, The Book Reporter
Review
“Bohjalian catches a key social moment with a book that’s fresh and
different… a tale of scandal, shame, and escalating suspense.” Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Review
“Gripping…Venturing into crime-thriller territory familiar to fans of
Harlan Coben, Bohjalian’s page-turner about an average Joe caught up in
sordid events beyond his control resonates with chilling plausibility.” Booklist
Review
“A good man’s momentary moral lapse plunges his happy, prosperous life
into a nightmare of murderous gangsters and remorseless sex traffickers.
Bohjalian’s deftness as a story teller is on full display here, as he
couples the urgency of a compulsively readable crime thriller with a
quiet meditation on the meaning of family and relationships; the
painstaking, quotidian, essential business of how we win love, and how
swiftly we can lose it.” Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize winning author of March
Review
“The Guest Room pulses quick as a page-turner, but its concerns
run deep into the moral consequences following an eruption of violence
in ordinary lives.” Charles Frazier, National Book Award winning author of Cold Mountain
About the Author
Chris Bohjalian is the critically acclaimed author of sixteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Sandcastle Girls, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, and Midwives. His novel Midwives was a number one New York Times bestseller
and a selection of Oprah’s Book Club. His work has been translated into
more than twenty-five languages, and three of his novels have become
movies (Secrets of Eden, Midwives, and Past the Bleachers). He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
Visit him at www.chrisbohjalian.com or on Facebook.