Keep Her Sweet: The tense, shocking, wickedly funny new psychological thriller from the author of The Cry

By Helen Fitzgerald

When a middle-aged couple downsizes to the countryside for an easier life, their two daughters become isolated, argumentative and violent … A chilling, vicious and darkly funny psychological thriller from bestselling author Helen FitzGerald

‘Sharp, shocking and savagely funny. Helen Fitzgerald is a wonderfully original storyteller’ Chris Whitaker

‘A new novel from Helen Fitzgerald is always, a major event … magnificent’ Mark Billingham

‘I devoured Keep Her Sweet … shite parenting and a dysfunctional sister relationship goes to fatal extremes’ Erin Kelly

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Desperate to enjoy their empty nest, Penny and Andeep downsize to the countryside, to forage, upcycle and fall in love again, only to be joined by their two twenty-something daughters, Asha and Camille.

Living on top of each other in a tiny house, with no way to make money, tensions simmer, and as Penny and Andeep focus increasingly on themselves, the girls become isolated, argumentative and violent.

When Asha injures Camille, a family therapist is called in, but she shrugs off the escalating violence between the sisters as a classic case of sibling rivalry … and the stress of the family move. 

But this is not sibling rivalry. The sisters are in far too deep for that.

This is a murder, just waiting to happen…

Chilling, vicious and darkly funny, Keep Her Sweet is not just a tense, sinister psychological thriller, but a startling look at sister relationships and they bonds they share … or shatter.

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‘A wonderful book about a toxic family … funny, shocking and full of heart. FitzGerald at her coruscating best' Doug Johnstone

‘Definitely one for those who love deadly dysfunctional families, whip-smart writing, and their stories dark, dark, deliciously dark’ Amanda Jennings

‘A novel rippling with power and intensity. A true page-turner’ Michael Wood

‘Wickedly funny, breath-stealingly tense and utterly chilling … a book you’ll want to talk about’ Miranda Dickinson

‘Helen Fitzgerald has an uncanny ability to balance savagery and hilarity … an absolute banger of a book’ Matt Wesolowski

'A crazy but addictive, dark and funny, read’ Louise Beech 

‘Dark humour sings from the pages’ Russel McLean

‘A fascinating and original tale of a family in rapid decline’ Jen Med’s Book Reviews

Praise for Helen FitzGerald

*Worst Case Scenario was Guardian, Telegraph, Herald Scotland AND The Week BOOK OF THE YEAR*
*Sunday Times TOP 40 Crime Novels in the Last 5 Years*
*Longlisted for Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2020*

‘The main character is one of the most extraordinary you’ll meet between the pages of a book’ Ian Rankin

‘Sublime’ Guardian

‘A dark, comic masterpiece which manages to be both excruciatingly tense and laugh out loud funny at the same time’ Mark Edwards

‘Urgent, angry, absolutely terrifying, yet suffused with the humanity and humour you expect from a Helen Fitzgerald novel’ Erin Kelly

‘Tantalisingly powerful’ The Times

‘Ash Mountain is the author at her masterly best … I loved it!’ Louise Candlish

‘The classic thriller gets a hell of a twist’ Heat

‘FitzGerald writes like a more focused Irvine Welsh or a less misogynist Philip Roth’ Daily Telegraph

‘Domestic life is rarely served up quite so dark as this – but that only makes you hungry for more’ The Sun

• Language: English
• Publisher: ORENDA BOOKS
• Release date: May 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781914585111

Helen Fitzgerald

Helen Fitzgerald is an author and lecturer certified in thanatology by the Association for Death Education and Counseling. For twenty-three years she was the coordinator of the Grief Program for Mental Health Services in Fairfax County, Virginia, where she conducted many groups for adults, as well as for grieving children ranging from preschool age through the high school years. In July 2000 she retired from that position and then served as the director of training for the American Hospice Foundation. Her books include The Grieving Child, The Mourning Handbook, and The Grieving Teen.