At the start of this gripping standalone from bestseller Slaughter (The Good Daughter), down-in-the-dumps Andrea "Andy" Oliver and her mother, Laura, a gifted speech therapist, meet for lunch at the Rise-n-Dine in her hometown of Belle Isle, Ga., to celebrate Andy's 31st birthday. When a gunman opens fire in the diner and kills two women, Laura confronts the man and shows remarkable courage in putting an end to his spree. In the ensuing media frenzy, Andy realizes how little she knows about her mother, who turns out to have been involved in some shady activities in the late 1980s, as revealed in flashbacks. As Andy tries to track down the pieces of her mother's past, her curiosity puts others in danger. Readers will be fascinated by Laura's backstory if sometimes frustrated by timid Andy's woes. The plot takes a while to build momentum, but once it does, it speeds to the satisfying payoff. Slaughter reinforces her place at the top of the thriller pack. Author tour. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders & Assoc. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A plain-Jane daughter's 31st birthday celebration explodes into a nightmare within a nightmare in Slaughter's latest stand-alone.Andrea Oliver's always felt inferior to her parents. Her father, Gordon Oliver, is a trusts and estates attorney; her mother, Dr. Laura Oliver, is a speech therapist. Andy herself has never aspired to any career goal higher than serving as an assistant to someone important. Even when she left Belle Isle, Georgia, for the Big Apple, she got nowhere, and she was only too eager to return home when her mother announced three years ago that she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. As the two women mark Andy's birthday by sharing lunch in a mall cafe, a crazed shooter opens fire on a mother-and-daughter pair who've stopped to greet Laura, and Andy's life changes in an instant. Or rather two instants, the first when the shots ring out and the second when Laura, after inviting the killer to shoot her next, coolly and dispassionately dispatches him. It takes the dazed Andy hours to realize that her mother's not at all who she seems to be, and by the time she's ready to accept the fact that Laura Oliver is a woman with a past, that past is already racing to catch up with both mother and daughter. Cutting back and forth between Andy's harrowing flight to nowhere after Laura pushes her out of her home and a backstory 30 years earlier involving the Army of the Changing World, a cell of amateur terrorists determined to strike a mortal blow against greedy capitalists and, it eventually turns out, each other as well, Slaughter (The Good Daughter, 2017, etc.) never abates her trademark intensity, and fans will feel that the story is pumping adrenalin directly into their bloodstreams. Long before the end, though, the impostures, secret identities, hidden motives, and double-crosses will have piled up past the point of no return, leaving the tale to run on adrenalin alone.Reading anything by Slaughter is like riding a particularly scary amusement park ride. Reading this one is like booking a season ticket on a ride that never lets you off. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

The latest stand-alone thriller from Edgar Award nominee Slaughter (Cop Town; The Good Daughter) introduces Andrea Cooper, a college grad living in New York City, working three part-time jobs and sitting on a mound of college debt. When her mother, Laura, is diagnosed with breast cancer, Andrea returns to the beach town of Belle Isle to care for her. While visiting a local mall, Andrea and Laura get caught up in a fatal shooting, revealing a side to Laura that Andrea has never before witnessed. Twenty-four hours later, Laura is in the hospital, wounded by an intruder who has spent 30 years trying to track her down. As secrets are uncovered and exposed, Andrea starts to wonder if everything she thought she knew about her life has been a fabrication. VERDICT With an intrigue- and suspense-filled plot, Slaughter's well-crafted, tense, and exhilarating story will keep readers on the edge of their seats. [See Prepub Alert, 1/22/18.]-Joni Gheen, Lady J's Bookish Nook, McConnelsville, OH © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

*Starred Review* Slaughter moves in a new direction with this story of a woman whose past catches up with her. Mousy Laura Cooper lives a quiet life in Georgia with her twentysomething daughter, Andrea. One morning, the women are in a restaurant when a man bursts in and starts shooting. Laura leaps up and kills the man, leaving Andrea (and the whole world, thanks to another diner's cellphone video) wondering where the hell Laura's ninja-like skills came from. When Andrea witnesses a stranger threatening Laura in their home the next day, Laura forces Andrea out of town to keep her safe. That backfires as Andrea becomes determined to uncover her mom's past, which is a doozy of a tale. Slaughter reveals the story bit by bit in chapters that leap from 1986 to the present, leading the reader from Oslo to San Francisco to Texas and back to Georgia. Her talent for writing convincingly flawed yet sympathetic characters is in high relief here, as she juggles the mystery of Laura, past and present. Readers will find themselves totally immersed in the suspenseful, alternating story lines and won't want either of them to end. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This departure from Slaughter's more-gruesome stand-alone thrillers and popular series mysteries will more than satisfy her many fans.--Vnuk, Rebecca Copyright 2018 Booklist