Such Charming Liars

The newest mystery from the author For all of Kat’s life, it’s just been her and her mother, Jamie--except for the forty-eight hours when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in an epic divorce, and Kat and Liam haven’t spoken since. Now Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job--at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s birthday party. And Kat has figured out a way to tag along. What Kat doesn’t know, though, is that there are two surprise guests at the dazzling Sutherland compound that weekend. The Kat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realize they might actually be in the killer’s crosshairs themselves. Somehow Kat and Liam are the new targets, and they can’t trust anyone--except each other. Or can they? Because if there’s one thing both Kat and Liam know, it’s how to lie. They learned from the best.

Auteur
Karen M. McManus is a #1 New York Times and international bestselling author of young adult thrillers. Her books include the One of Us Is Lying series, which has been turned into a television show on Peacock, as well as the standalone novels Two Can Keep a Secret, The Cousins, You’ll Be the Death of Me, Nothing More to Tell, and Such Charming Liars. Karen's critically acclaimed, award-winning work has been translated into more than forty languages.

Texte du rabat

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The newest mystery from the author One of Us Is Lying, the Queen of thrillers, Karen M. McManus! When mother-daughter grifters set out on their final job, the heist gets deadly and dangerously personal.

For all of Kat’s life, it’s just been her and her mother, Jamie—except for the forty-eight hours when Jamie was married and Kat had a stepbrother, Liam. That all ended in an epic divorce, and Kat and Liam haven’t spoken since.

Now Jamie is a jewel thief trying to go straight, but she has one last job—at billionaire Ross Sutherland’s birthday party. And Kat has figured out a way to tag along. What Kat doesn’t know, though, is that there are two surprise guests at the dazzling Sutherland compound that weekend. The last two people she wants to run into. Liam and his father—a serial scammer who has his sights set on Ross Sutherland’s youngest daughter.

Kat and Liam are on a collision course to disaster, and when a Sutherland dies, they realize they might actually be in the killer’s crosshairs themselves. Somehow Kat and Liam are the new targets, and they can’t trust anyone—except each other.

Or can they? Because if there’s one thing both Kat and Liam know, it’s how to lie. They learned from the best.

Échantillon de lecture
CHAPTER ONE

Kat

“Would the young lady like to see something with a pearl?”

“I’d love to,” I say.

The voice I use isn’t mine. It’s what Gem calls “vaguely posh”; meant to convey a childhood at British boarding schools interrupted by a transatlantic move to New England that almost, but not entirely, eliminated my accent. It’s a lot to get across in three words and I don’t think I nailed it, but the man behind the counter smiles kindly.

“Sixteen is an important birthday,” he says.

I couldn’t agree more, which is why I spent mine in my friend Hannah’s hot tub with Nick Sheridan and a flask of tequila. But now is not the time to share that recollection, so I just smile demurely as Gem says, “A special day for my special girl.”

Gem’s accent is impeccable. She sounds like a BBC presenter and looks like a twenty-first-century version of the grandmother on Downton Abbey. I barely recognized her when she came to pick me up, and couldn’t stop stealing glances at her transformation during the drive to the Prudential Center in Back Bay. Gem’s coarse steel-gray hair is concealed beneath a silvery chignon. She’s decked out in an elegant blue suit that would fit in at a royal wedding, and she’s done some kind of makeup magic that’s tamed her leathery skin into soft, powdery lines.

I don’t recognize myself, either, when I glance into the mirror behind the counter. I’m a buttery blond, for one thing, and I’m wearing a blouse-and-skirt combo that looks expensive, even though I’m sure it’s not. The nonprescription tortoiseshell glasses I have on are so cute that I might make them a permanent part of my wardrobe. Gem and I are cosplaying the kind of people who swan into Bennington & Main to celebrate birthdays with expensive jewelry, and we are pulling it off.

“Something like this?” the sales associate asks, holding up a delicate rose-gold ring with a single gray pearl. It’s exactly the kind of ring a wealthy, indulgent grandmother would buy, and even though Gem is none of those things, she gives a regal nod of approval.

“Try it on, Sophie,” she says.

I slip it onto my right index finger and hold out my hand, admiring the subtle shine. Not my style at all, but perfect for Sophie Hicks-Hartwell. That’s my getting-into-character name, which I picked not only because it, too, sounds vaguely posh, but because it’s the name of a girl whose Instagram identity was stolen in a twisted true crime story that I devoured recently on my favorite podcast. A little inside joke that even Gem didn’t catch.

“It’s so pretty,” I say. “What do you think, Nana?”

“Very sweet,” Gem says, peering over her bifocals. “But a bit on the small side.”

That’s the cue for the sales associate, whose name tag reads BERNARD, to show us bigger and better rings. Gem’s eyes rove over them like dual cameras, capturing every detail of the luxe designs and storing them away for future reference. Gem might be pushing seventy, but her memory is a thousand times sharper than mine. Photographic, my mother always says.

“Should we look at something with a diamond?” she asks.

Hell yeah is on the tip of my tongue, but that’s a Kat response. Sophie would never. “Really? Could we?” I simper as Bernard pulls out another tray.

“Looks like your grandmother is getting ready to spoil you,” he says, eyes gleaming with the reflected glow of a bigger commission.

For the first time, my stomach swoops guiltily. When Gem proposed this little field trip, I was more than happy to come along, because Bennington & Main is a retail nightmare—a historic family-owned store that got snapped up by an obnoxious crypto billionaire and transformed into a Tiffany copycat. The new CEO hired an emerging designer to update what he called the company’s “staid” style, then fired her once her designs took off.

In other words, Bennington & Main is the perfect target for Gem’s latest business: selling near-perfect fakes of iconic jewelry designs. Customers get the look they want at sterling-and-cubic-zirconia prices, and a shady company loses value. Win-win, if by win you mean a crypto bro loses. Which I do.

But none of that is Bernard’s fault. We’re just wasting his time while Gem studies the latest Bennington & Main designs, cataloging all the tiny details you can’t see on a website. “Exquisite,” she murmurs, holding up a diamond vine ring that’s so perfectly constructed it looks like a wearable sculpture. I know from our online stalking that the ring Gem is holding costs more than $20,000, so it’s out of even Sophie’s league.

Still, I can’t help but lean closer, imagining what it would be like to own something so beauti…