Andromeda Romano-Lax

A twisty, jaw-dropping psychological thriller that unravels a mother''s worst nightmare—that her child is capable of terrible violence—when her teenage son becomes a suspect in the murder of two classmates, from the author of The Deepest Lake.“Timely and terrifyingly real, What Boys Learn is not to be missed.”—Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of It''s Not HerOver one terrible weekend, two teenage girls are found dead in a wealthy Chicago suburb. As the community mourns, Abby Rosso, the girls’ high school counselor, begins to suspect that her son was secretly involved in their lives—and possibly, their deaths.Abby doesn’t want to believe Benjamin hurt anyone. But she’s seen the warning signs before. Two decades ago, her brother was imprisoned for a disturbing crime—he was only a little older than Benjamin is now. And Abby has more troubling memories from her own adolescence that confirm what boys and men are capable of. As Abby searches for the truth about what happened to her students, she’s forced to face the question: Has she been making excuses for Benjamin for years?Swirling with sharp questions about family and masculinity, What Boys Learn unravels a mother’s worst fears.

Rose, the mother of twentysomething aspiring writer Jules, has waited three months for answers about her daughter''s death. Why was she swimming alone when she feared the water? Why did she stop texting days before she was last seen? When the official investigation rules the death an accidental drowning, the body possibly lost forever in Central America''s deepest lake, an unsatisfied Rose travels to the memoir workshop herself. She hopes to draw her own conclusion - and find closure. When Rose arrives, she is swept into the curious world created by her daughter''s literary hero, the famous writing teacher Eva Marshall, a charismatic woman known for her candid - and controversial - memoirs. As Rose uncovers details about the days leading up to Jules''s disappearance, she begins to suspect that this glamorous retreat package is hiding ugly truths. Is Lake Atitlan a place where traumatized women come to heal or a place where deeper injury is inflicted? The Deepest Lake is both a sharp look at the sometimes toxic, exclusionary world of high-class writing workshops and an achingly poignant view of a mother''s grief.