Vanishing Falls

One of CrimeReads Most Anticipated Books of the Year!

"This

literary thriller paints as vivid a landscape as any book coming out this

summer...Gee creates a lush, tantalizing world that

readers will want to travel into deeper and deeper."—CrimeReads

Celia

Lily is rich, beautiful, and admired. She’s also missing. And the search for

the glamorous socialite is about to expose all the dark, dirty secrets of

Vanishing Falls…

Deep

within the lush Tasmanian rainforest is the remote town of Vanishing Falls, a

place with a storied past. The town’s showpiece, built in the 1800s, is its Calendar

House—currently occupied by Jack Lily, a prominent art collector and landowner;

his wife, Celia; and their four daughters. The elaborate, eccentrically

designed mansion houses one masterpiece and 52 rooms—and Celia Lily isn’t in

any of them. She has vanished without a trace.…

Joelle

Smithton knows that a few folks in Vanishing Falls believe that she’s

simple-minded. It’s true that Joelle’s brain works a little differently—a

legacy of shocking childhood trauma. But Joelle sees far more than most people

realize, and remembers details that others cast away. For instance, she knows

that Celia’s husband, Jack, has connections to unsavory local characters whom

he’s desperate to keep hidden. He’s not the only one in town with something to

conceal. Even Joelle’s own husband, Brian, a butcher, is acting suspiciously.

While the police flounder, unable to find Celia, Joelle is gradually parsing

the truth from the gossip she hears and from the simple gestures and statements

that can unwittingly reveal so much.  

Just

as the water from the falls disappears into the ground, gushing away through

subterranean creeks, the secrets in Vanishing Falls are pulsing through the

town, about to converge. And when they do, Joelle must summon the courage to

reveal what really happened to Celia, even if it means exposing her own past…