The Last House on the Street: A Novel

By Diane Chamberlain

A community’s past sins rise to the surface in New York Times bestselling author Diane Chamberlain’s The Last House on the Street when two women, a generation apart, find themselves bound by tragedy and an unsolved, decades-old mystery.

1965

Growing up in the well-to-do town of Round Hill, North Carolina, Ellie Hockley was raised to be a certain type of proper Southern lady. Enrolled in college and all but engaged to a bank manager, Ellie isn’t as committed to her expected future as her family believes. She’s chosen to spend her summer break as a volunteer helping to register black voters. But as Ellie follows her ideals fighting for the civil rights of the marginalized, her scandalized parents scorn her efforts, and her neighbors reveal their prejudices. And when she loses her heart to a fellow volunteer, Ellie discovers the frightening true nature of the people living in Round Hill.

2010

Architect Kayla Carter and her husband designed a beautiful house for themselves in Round Hill’s new development, Shadow Ridge Estates. It was supposed to be a home where they could raise their three-year-old daughter and grow old together. Instead, it’s the place where Kayla’s husband died in an accident—a fact known to a mysterious woman who warns Kayla against moving in. The woods and lake behind the property are reputed to be haunted, and the new home has been targeted by vandals leaving threatening notes. And Kayla’s neighbor Ellie Hockley is harboring long buried secrets about the dark history of the land where her house was built.

Two women. Two stories. Both on a collision course with the truth--no matter what that truth may bring to light--in Diane Chamberlain's riveting, powerful novel about the search for justice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jan 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781250267979

Diane Chamberlain

Diane Chamberlain is the bestselling author of twenty novels, including The Midwife's Confession and The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes. Diane lives in North Carolina and is currently at work on her next novel. Visit her Web site at www.dianechamberlain.com and her blog at www.dianechamberlain.com/blog and her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Diane.Chamberlain.Readers.Page.

Book preview

Chapter 1

KAYLA

2010

I’m in the middle of a call with a contractor when Natalie, our new administrative assistant, pokes her head into my office. I put the call on hold.

This woman is in the foyer and she says she has an eleven o’clock appointment with you, but I don’t have her on your calendar. She looks worried, as though afraid she’s already screwed up. Ann Smith?

The name is unfamiliar. I don’t have any appointments today, I say, glancing at the time on my phone. Eleven-oh-five. I should see the woman in case the screwup is on my end. I’ve only been back to work a couple of weeks and don’t completely trust myself to think straight yet. You can send her in.

A woman appears at my open office door as I wrap up my call and get to my feet. She’s not at all my usual client—those thirty- or forty-somethings who’ve amassed enough money to build the home of their dreams. No, Ann Smith looks closer to sixty-five or seventy, though she appears to be fighting her age with vivid red shoulder-length hair. She wears mirrored sunglasses that mask her eyes, but nothing can camouflage the way her red lipstick bleeds into the lines around her mouth.

Ann Smith? I ask, smiling and curious as I reach out to shake her hand. I’m Kayla Carter. Please come in and have a seat. I didn’t have you on my schedule today—something must have fallen through the cracks—but I have about half an hour. What can I do for you?

She doesn’t return my smile as she sits down in the red Barcelona chair I offer her. I wish she’d remove her sunglasses. I see only my warped reflection instead of her eyes. It’s disconcerting.

I want to put an addition on my house, she says, folding her hands in the lap of her khaki slacks. Her nails are long acrylics, the red polish sloppily applied, and her voice is deep. Very deep, with a bit of a rasp to it. She looks around my office as if searching for something. She seems uneasy.

Well, tell me about your house, I say. Where is it? It’s weird, speaking to my own misshapen reflection in her glasses.

Not far from here, she says. It’s a boxy nineteen-sixties house. Too dark. I want to add a sunroom.

I picture the house, old and airless. I can imagine the way it smells and the tight feeling of the walls as you pass from room to room. It probably cries out for a sunroom and I’ve designed plenty of them, but I’m not sure I’m the right architect for this project. Bader and Duke Design hired Jackson and me specifically to bring a more contemporary element to the decades-old North Carolina firm. Ann Smith’s house sounds like it needs a cozier aesthetic.

Do you have any pictures of your home? I ask.

She doesn’t answer. Instead, she stares at me. Or at least, I guess, she’s staring. Who knows what her eyes are doing behind those glasses? I feel suddenly uncomfortable, as though the power in the room has shifted from me to her.

No pictures with me, she says finally. I lost my husband and now the house seems … oppressive. She leans forward a few inches. You know how that feels, don’t you? Losing your husband?

A shiver runs up my spine. How does she know about Jackson? How does she know anything about me? Natalie must have mentioned something to her while she was waiting. Yes, I do understand what that’s like, I say slowly. I’m so sorry about your loss. But back to your house. How would you like to use the sunroom? For entertaining or—

Mine had a heart attack, she says. He was seventy, which probably seems old to you, but it isn’t really. You’re what? Thirty, maybe? You’ll be seventy in the blink of an eye. Your husband, though. He was way too young, wasn’t he? Her dark eyebrows suddenly pop above the sunglasses in a question. And to die like he did, falling off the staircase while he was building your new house. Just a shame.

How does she know all this? Any mention of Jackson can throw me off these days, and coming from this odd woman … I don’t want her to know anything about me. I’ll have to have a serious talk with Natalie. Well. I try to get my footing again. You’re right. It’s been difficult. But I’d really like us to focus on your project. Tell me what you—

How can you move into the house that took him from you? She asks the question I’ve been wondering myself. No one should’ve put a house there to begin with. All those new houses. They don’t belong. But especially that one. Yours. So modern. And stuck back in the trees like it is.

My palms are sticky on the arms of my chair. At this very moment, we are in an office in Greenville, nearly thirty miles from the Shadow Ridge neighborhood in the outskirts of Round Hill, where my beautiful, newly completed house is waiting for Rainie and me to move into it. How can she know about the house? About my life? What does any of it have to do with her? How do you know so much about me and what does it have to do with your project? I ask.

Shadow Ridge Estates, the woman continues, that deep voice of hers mocking. Who came up with that pretentious name? All those trees suck the breath out of you. You don’t really want to move in there, do you? It’s no place for a child. No place for a little girl. Especially one who just lost her daddy.

Oh my God. She knows about Rainie. I don’t know how to handle this. She’s touching me in my softest, most wounded places and I can’t think straight.

I have to get myself under control. I sit up straight, ready to turn the tables on her.

Would you mind taking your glasses off? I ask.

Yes, I’d mind, she says. Light bothers me. She raises a hand to touch the edge of her glasses, and the loose sleeve of her white blouse slips a few inches up her arm, exposing a pink line across her forearm. Had she tried to kill herself at one time? But I don’t think that’s it. The line is short and rounded. It looks more like a birthmark than a scar.

I think you’d better go to another firm, I say, getting to my feet. I only do contemporary design.

She looks toward the ceiling as if considering the suggestion, then back at me. If you say so, yes. I guess I’d better. She picks up her purse and stands suddenly, and I step back, afraid of her. Afraid of an old woman. I want her out of my office. I move toward the door, but she swiftly steps forward to block my path. Do you want to know what keeps me awake at night? she asks.

I’d like you to leave, I say. She’s too close to me now, so close that I can see the fear in my eyes in the distorted reflection in her sunglasses.

"Thinking, she says. That’s what keeps me awake. Thinking about killing someone."

I push my way past her. Open the door and stand aside. Leave. My voice sounds firm. At least I hope it does. But Ann Smith doesn’t budge.

I’ve been thinking about it for a long, long time, she continues. Years and years and years. And now I have the chance.

My heart thuds against my rib cage. Is she talking about me? Am I the someone? Years and years and years. It can’t be me. Still, I glance around the room for a weapon, spotting nothing. I think of my three-year-old daughter. Leaving her an orphan.

Who are you talking about? I ask, distressed by the quaking of my voice.

I don’t think I want to tell you. She smiles the smile of someone who has all the power. Then she pivots and walks to the doorway. I say nothing as she leaves the room and I watch her move down the hallway with the ease of a younger woman. Shutting the door, I stand frozen for a full minute before my brain kicks in and I rush to the window. I look out at the tiny parking lot we reserve for clients and contractors, watching for Ann Smith, hoping to see what car she gets into. But she never appears and I stand there numbly, the specter of her presence still looming behind me.

Chapter 2

ELLIE

1965

There are moments in life when you suddenly see your future and it’s not at all what you expected. I was home from the University of North Carolina for spring break and we were all sitting in the living room. Daddy was reading the paper in his favorite chair, the leather so old it made cracking sounds each time he moved. Buddy was at the fold-down desk by the fireplace, tinkering with some small mechanical part from a car. And Mama sat between Brenda and me on the sofa, the Brides magazine open on her lap. Brenda had brought the magazine over and the three of us were admiring the dresses. I had to bite my tongue as Brenda paged through the magazine, though, and I wondered if Mama was biting hers, too. After all, Brenda would not be wearing one of those frothy white dresses, and I, as her maid of honor, would not be wearing one of the beautiful taffeta bridesmaid creations. Brenda’s wedding to Garner Cleveland, due to take place next Saturday, would be small and quiet and necessary, with no attendants other than Garner’s best friend, Reed—who happened to be my boyfriend—and me.

Brenda turned the page, and the photographs of dresses gave way to the headline of an article: Sexual Harmony and How to Attain It.

Don’t need that one. Brenda laughed, patting her still-flat belly. She turned the page and if my mother hadn’t been sitting next to me, I would have turned it back, curious. I knew next to nothing about sexual harmony. It wasn’t that I was a prude. It was just that Reed and I hadn’t gone that far, by mutual agreement. I wanted to wait until I was married and although Reed did give me a bit of an intellectual argument about it, he said he admired me for my decision. I hadn’t criticized Brenda for her decision, though. Every girl had to figure out what was right for herself when it came to that sort of thing. What had shocked me the most about Brenda’s pregnancy was that I’d had no idea she and Garner were intimate. I felt hurt that my longtime best friend and dorm mate had kept something so monumental from me.

When I told Mama about Brenda’s condition and that she had to marry Garner right away, she expressed sympathy. That poor girl, she said. She just cut her freedom short, followed by a stern, Learn from this, Eleanor. This is what happens when you let things go too far. You and Reed better behave yourselves.

Mama, I’d said, I’m not stupid. And we’re not as serious as Garner and Brenda are.

I’d say Reed’s plenty serious about you, she said. That boy adores you.

Reed was a real sweetheart and I’d known him most of my life. He finished college in three years and now worked at Round Hill’s biggest bank. He wore a suit and tie every day—a blue tie, to set off his sky-blue eyes and dark hair. He was handsome in a suit, no doubt about it, but now that I was surrounded by college guys in their chinos and madras shirts, Reed sometimes seemed a bit stuffy to me.

I was touched that Mama was sitting with Brenda and me now, kindly oohing and aahing over the bridal gowns as if Brenda might actually be able to select one and wear it to her wedding. Mama loved Brenda, sometimes referring to her as her second daughter, and Brenda had called her Mama for years. Brenda’s own chilly mother would never look through Brides magazine with her. She agreed to come to the ceremony, as she called it, even though Brenda’s father refused, but she wasn’t about to indulge Brenda’s fantasies of a fancy wedding when it would be anything but.

I love this one. Brenda pointed to the sparkly bodice of a beautiful, silver-hued white gown. I keep coming back to it over and over again.

Mama touched the back of Brenda’s hand. It must be very hard to know you won’t be able to have the wedding of your dreams, she said.

I glanced at Brenda. I could tell she was holding back tears. I knew she was happy, though. She and Garner were madly in love.

Listen to this, Daddy said suddenly, and I shifted my gaze from the magazine to my father. He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table by his side and began to read. ‘Reverend Greg Filburn, pastor of the AME church in Turner’s Bend, announced today that several hundred white students from Northern and Western colleges will spend the summer in the Southern states registering Negroes to vote. Derby County is expected to host a number of those students. Only—’

Oh great, Buddy interrupted him without taking his eyes off the metal part in his hands. Just what we need. A bunch of Northern agitators.

‘Only thirty-four percent of Negroes in Derby County are now registered,’ Daddy continued reading, ‘compared to ninety-four percent of the white population, Reverend Filburn said. The voting rights bill, soon to be signed into law by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, will hopefully change that disparity, and we need to do all we can to make sure our folks can register. The program is called SCOPE, which stands for the Summer Community Organization and Political Education project—’ Daddy interrupted his own reading with a laugh. That’s a mouthful, he said, then continued, ‘—and it will send more than five hundred volunteers into seventy-five rural counties with the aim of removing racism from American politics.’

What do you think of this bridesmaid dress? Brenda pointed to a page in the magazine, but neither my mother nor I even glanced at it. Both of us had our attention on my father. Especially me, even though I wasn’t yet certain why.

Are you sure they don’t just mean deeper south? Mama asked. You know, Alabama and Mississippi where they have all the trouble? Not North Carolina.

Sounds like they mean here too, Daddy said, since this Filburn fella’s church is in Turner’s Bend. Turner’s Bend was the town right next to Round Hill, where we lived.

This sounds exactly like the sort of thing Carol would’ve done, doesn’t it? Mama asked.

We all automatically turned our heads to look at the empty rocking chair by the fireplace, where Aunt Carol always sat. Cancer took her from us the year before and I don’t think anyone had sat in that chair since. I felt her loss every minute of every day. Aunt Carol was the only person in the family who seemed to understand me. Or, as she told me one time, I was the only person who seemed to understand her.

Carol would’ve hopped right on that bandwagon, Mama continued, and Daddy rolled his eyes.

That woman never met an underdog she didn’t like, he said.

Buddy set down the part he’d been fiddling with. I don’t like the sound of that SCOPE thing one bit, he said. What gives anybody from the North the goddamned right to come down here and—

Buddy! Mama said. Your mouth!

Sorry, Mama, but this gets my goat, he said. Let them register if they want to, it’s no skin off my teeth, but we don’t need hundreds of crazy white kids from New York or wherever descending on Derby County.

He and my parents kept up the conversation, but something happened to me in the few minutes it took Daddy to read the article. For the past two years, I’d been a reporter and photographer for the campus newspaper at UNC. I’d covered the protests as students tried to get the downtown restaurants and shops to desegregate. At first, I wrote my articles objectively, just reporting the facts, but when I proudly showed Aunt Carol one of them, she frowned. I want you to think about what you’re writing, Ellie, she said, in that New York accent she’d never lost despite her twenty years in the South. "Think about what you write not as a Southerner. Not as a Northerner, either. Think about it as a human being."

I knew my beautiful blond aunt had long been a champion of civil rights. A year earlier, she’d taken part in the March on Washington, where she heard Martin Luther King, Jr., speak. It was all she could talk about for weeks afterward, making my mother roll her eyes and my father lay down the law, telling her that she could not go on and on about it at the dinner table. Only in the last couple of years had I begun to understand her passion, and talking to her about what was happening on campus changed my work on the newspaper. She made me dig deeper and I began to view events with my heart as well as my head. As I continued to interview the students, their passion and commitment—their belief in the rightness of what they were doing—made sense to me. Those students, white and Negro, put themselves on the line, body and soul. They were steadfastly nonviolent, not even fighting back when abused by passersby or dragged away by the police, and my articles about the protests grew more sympathetic toward them even without me realizing it.

Aunt Carol met Uncle Pete, my father’s brother, when she was an army nurse and he was a soldier. After the war they moved in with us. I was only a year old at the time, so she was always a part of my life. Sometimes, the best part. She left discipline to my parents, so I knew I could tell her anything—almost—without getting in trouble. Uncle Pete died when I was ten, but Aunt Carol remained with us. She was blunt; I never needed to guess what she was thinking. As I grew older and became aware of the prickly relationship she had with my parents—especially with my mother—I wondered why she didn’t move back to New York. Toward the end of her life, when cancer was stealing her away from us, I talked to her about it. Why did you stay with us? I asked as I wrapped her shawl tighter around her bony shoulders. She was always cold then, even in the summer. You never loved North Carolina.

"No, but I loved you, she said. And I think you needed me. I didn’t want you to turn into your mother."

What do you mean? My mother was all right. She wasn’t particularly warm but she was smart. She was a librarian in the Round Hill library.

She may spend her life around books, but her mind is shuttered closed, Aunt Carol said. Think about it. There’s a reason you share what you’re writing for the school paper with me and not with her, isn’t there?

She was right. My mother would have been disgusted by the way I wrote about the protests. The way I now sided with the protesters.

I’m dying, Ellie, Aunt Carol said, matter-of-factly. But keep talking to me after I’m gone, all right? She smiled. Pretend I’m here. You’re a wonderful young woman. Keep writing about injustice. Act on your convictions. Don’t let those shutters close your mind. Not ever.

Around that time, I’d been assigned to work on a project with Gloria, the lone Negro student in my pharmacology class. I suggested we talk about our project at the local sandwich shop, but she shook her head. Let’s meet in the library, instead, she said. I’m not hungry. Only in bed that night did I realize that Gloria wouldn’t have been allowed to eat in the sandwich shop with me and I felt embarrassed that I’d suggested it and angry on her behalf.

Then last spring, only a few miserable days after Aunt Carol’s funeral, Brenda was with me when I was assigned to cover an extraordinary protest for the paper. Students and professors and even some townspeople knelt side by side across Franklin Street, blocking traffic. They held protest signs against their chests, their expressions solemn and sincere. I snapped pictures and felt moved by their quiet courage. Some of the girls wore skirts and I knew the asphalt had to be killing their knees and wrecking their nylons. I could tell from their stoic expressions that they didn’t care. Their stockings were the last thing on their minds. They weren’t thinking about themselves at all. They were thinking about the segregated shops and restaurants. They were thinking about the segregated grocery store where the owner poured ammonia over the heads of peaceful demonstrators, sending some of them to the hospital with second-degree burns. Aunt Carol had cried when I told her about that.

Gloria was one of the protesters in the street that day. She knelt at the end of the line closest to us next to a young white man, and I made sure to get her in some of my photographs.

Brenda shook her head as I snapped pictures. This is stupid, she said. They’re all going to end up getting arrested, and what for? It’s not going to change anything.

Her words were nothing more than a whine in my ear. Impulsively, before I had a chance to change my mind, I handed her my camera, slung my purse over my shoulder, and stepped into the street myself.

"What are you doing?" Brenda shouted from behind me.

I took my place at the end of the line—which was in the gutter—and got down on my knees next to Gloria. She didn’t look at me but kept her eyes straight ahead and I did the same. Pain settled into my knees almost instantly and I felt the stocking on my right leg run clear up my thigh. A young man moved toward me and handed me a sign. I didn’t know what it said, but I held it in front of me, as my fellow protesters were doing. My heart pounded but my breathing felt steady. My breathing felt right.

There was commotion all around us. Cars and angry drivers. A group of protesters marching on the other side of the street. Townspeople taking our picture. Through the cacophony, I heard Brenda yell, "What the hell, Ellie! Get out of the damn gutter!" I tuned her out. I tuned all of it out. I heard Aunt Carol’s voice in my head: Act on your convictions. Although the physical pain had slipped to the background, I felt tears sting my eyes. Roll down my cheeks.

The police came in a white truck everyone called the paddy wagon.

Go limp! someone in the line yelled. I knew that’s what you were supposed to do. Don’t fight the police, but don’t make it easy on them either. I felt the temptation to get up. Walk back to Brenda and disappear into the crowd of onlookers. But the stronger part of me held my ground. The cops began dragging and carrying my fellow protesters toward the paddy wagon. One cop pulled the sign from my hands, lifted me to my feet, and pushed me toward the truck, his hands gripping my shoulders. I couldn’t make myself go limp like some of the others. Like Gloria did. She made them carry her, her skirt hiked up to her garters. It frightened me, the thought of being that helpless. Instead, I let myself be prodded along until the gaping rear of the truck was in front of me, and that’s when reality began to sink in. I could still hear Brenda shouting to me from the other side of the street as I climbed into the truck, though I didn’t know what she was saying. Was I being arrested? How would I explain to my parents that I felt as though I had to do what I did?

We were detained at the police station and later set free without arrest, and although Brenda told Garner and Reed and they both chewed me out for taking such a stupid risk, my parents still had no idea what I’d done.

Now, Daddy reached the end of the newspaper article. I was only vaguely aware of Buddy saying, They let that many bleedin’-heart white beatniks into Derby County, they’re just askin’ for trouble, and Mama saying, Only thirty-four percent of Negroes are registered? Sheer laziness. Why don’t they just get themselves to the courthouse and take care of it?, and Brenda saying, Do you think the neckline on this dress is too revealing?, because I knew … I knew in a way I couldn’t explain even to myself … that I was going to be one of those white students working to register Negro voters.

I knew it the way I knew my own name.

Chapter 3

KAYLA

2010

So, the female police officer says once introductions have been made and the four of us—two officers, Natalie, and myself—are all sitting in my office. Give me a description of her.

I’d hesitated about calling the police, not wanting to overreact, but when Natalie told me she’d given Ann Smith no personal information about me whatsoever, I thought I’d better talk to someone.

She had red hair, I say. Very red. Dyed I’m sure. Shoulder length. It sort of fell forward, covering her face. I demonstrate with my dark hair, smoothing it over my cheeks with my hands.

But her eyebrows were brown. Natalie touches her own eyebrows, as pale as her own long blond hair.

Could her hair have been a wig? the male officer—PETRIE, his badge reads—asks.

I hadn’t thought of that and I realize now that the woman’s hair had looked shiny and thick for someone her age. Yes, I suppose it could have been.

Race?

White.

Eye color?

That’s the thing, I say. She wore mirrored sunglasses. She refused to take them off when I asked. She said the light bothered her.

Officer Oakley, the female officer, looks at her partner as if that’s a telling piece of information.

She wore very red lipstick and red nail polish. Her nails were long. Acrylics. But … sloppy. As though she did them herself. She had on a white blouse and khaki pants.

You were very observant. Officer Oakley smiles.

And her voice was deep, I add.

Croaky, Natalie adds.

Could she have been a he? Officer Oakley asks.

Despite the deep voice, there’d been something so female about the woman. It’s possible, but… I press my lips together. Shake my head. I don’t think so.

Maybe trans? Officer Petrie offers.

I don’t know, I say. I just don’t … She was so strange. But here’s the thing that really got me. Really … shook me up. I sit forward. She knew things about me. She knew about my husband. He was killed four months ago. He was also an architect here and we designed our new house together in a new development in Round Hill. He was working inside the house and one of the construction workers accidentally left a handful of screws on the top step of the staircase before the railing was installed. Jackson didn’t see the screws and he stepped on them and fell. The woman knew about it. And she knows I’m about to move into the house. And she knows I have a little girl, nearly four years old. She even seemed to know the lot our house is on. And she said something about… I bite my lip, trying to remember her exact words. Something like, ‘You shouldn’t move in there.’

When are you moving in? Officer Petrie asks.

Saturday. I’ve had my own misgivings about moving into the house. Will I ever be able to walk up those stairs without thinking of the accident? But Jackson and I had been designing the house for the seven years of our marriage. It was our dream house, a spectacular contemporary on four wooded acres. Jackson would want Rainie and me to create a life in that house, and I truly do want to live there. I just want to feel okay about it.

Where are you living now? Officer Oakley asks.

We’re living temporarily with my father in Round Hill. We moved in with him—into the house I grew up in—after Jackson … after the accident. It’s still too hard for me to put those two words together: Jackson died.

And where is your daughter now?

You mean … right this minute?

She nods.

I glance at my phone for the time, suddenly afraid. Is Rainie in danger? She’s at my father’s, I say. She goes to preschool in the morning. Then he picks her up and takes her to his house, where—

When we’re done here, call him and make sure he keeps a close eye on her for a few days.

Oh God, I say.

What’s his name? Your father? asks Officer Petrie. And his number? Just so we have it on file.

Reed Miller, I say, and I rattle off his phone number. What do you think she wants from me? I ask. Could I be the person she wants to kill?

Fortunately, you’re here, alive and well, so hopefully not, Officer Oakley says. You did a great job. So we have an excellent description of a woman who would stand out anywhere. She hands me her card. I know you’re scared, she says. You’ve been through a lot and I don’t blame you for feeling a bit paranoid right now.

Officer Petrie looks toward my bookcase. Was that picture here when Ann Smith was in the office?

I follow his gaze to the bookcase and see the framed photograph of the three of us—Jackson, Rainie, and myself. I’m grinning in the picture, my arm around Jackson’s waist. Rainie, just two at the time, sits on his shoulders, her arms stretched wide, trusting her daddy to hold tight to her legs. Jackson’s dark hair falls over his forehead, and his eyes crinkle with joy. The photograph was taken the day we closed on our four wooded acres in Shadow Ridge. We could not have been happier.

"Yes, I say. Maybe that’s how she knew about my daughter? Though it doesn’t explain everything else she knew about me."

Well, if you see her again anywhere, Officer Petrie says to both Natalie and myself, call us right away. Don’t put yourself in any danger. Just call us.

Natalie looks at me. People say ‘I want to kill so-and-so’ all the time, she says, reassuringly. She was probably just—

No, I say with certainty. This was different. She meant it.

On the one hand, Officer Oakley says, "I wish she’d given you more information to help us out, but for your sake, it’s good she didn’t. I don’t like that she knows where you live, or at least, where you’re going to be living. It’s a new house, so you probably have good locks, a good security system?" It was more of a question than a statement.

I have a security system, I say. I’d done nothing about setting it up yet, though. You don’t think about security systems in a safe little town like Round Hill. I’ll get it taken care of, I say, mentally adding it to my insanely long list of things to do.

Once the police and Natalie leave, I call my father, but he doesn’t pick up, which is not unusual. He’s terrible with his phone.

Hey, Dad, I say. Keep a close eye on Rainie this afternoon, okay? I’ll explain later. I’m on my way home.

Then I pack my briefcase and leave my office, carefully locking the door behind me.

---

I usually enjoy the walk from my office to the underground garage in downtown Greenville, sometimes stopping to pick up a cappuccino for the half-hour drive home to Round Hill, but this afternoon, I look over my shoulder with every step. I reach the garage and shudder as I walk into the shadows. The building absorbs the daylight and I nearly run to my car. Once inside the SUV, doors locked, I feel my heart thudding in my chest. I sit there for a moment, hands in my lap, thinking. Maybe I should put the new house on the market. Forget about moving in. Jackson and I had designed the house for ourselves and the family we hoped to create. At four thousand square feet it’s far too big for just Rainie and me. But I tear up at the thought of someone else living in the house we designed with so much love and

Reviews for The Last House on the Street

[wiserwisegirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Diane Chamberlain does not disappoint with this dual timeline mystery thriller. I could relate to the storyline in both timelines - and The Last House on the Street was hard to put down. I emersed myself in the many twists and turns. At times I was a teenager trying to save the world or sort through friendship, love, and survival. Then as a widow protecting her child, but trying to manage a building project gone wrong and a sweeter than life father who is holding secrets. In the end you will find every piece fits together. Highly recommended.

[deslivres5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Told in alternating voices, early 1960s and the 2010s, two mysteries affecting both main characters gels into a single mystery and conclusion.As with other Diane Chamberlain novels, I enjoyed the local NC color, as well as the historical perspectives surrounding the Voting Rights Act. I did not like how some incidents are resolved and the novel has a pretty sad tone overall.

[nyiper · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What incredible timing for this book to come out right now, right along with Tomas E. Ricks book --Waging a Good War--a Military History of the Civil Rights Movement. Chamberlain's novel is so compelling and horrifying because the problems surrounding the right to vote and all that it encompasses is seeming to go backwards in this current environment. As a novel, it was frighteningly realistic in the descriptions---hard to read but also hard to put down!!

[micareads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thanks to Diane Chamberlain, St. Martin's Press, and Netgalley for the chance to receive an advanced copy in return for an honest review.

Kayla Carter has recently lost her husband and is moving into the home they designed together with their daughter. The new house, although being in Kayla's childhood town, is backed up against a forest...a very dense, scary forest. Strange things start to happen including her garbage being tipped, squirrels being killed and pinned to her trees, and her young child being kidnapped.

Kayla's nearest neighbor is named Ellie Hockley, a woman who grew up in the area during the 1960s. During her teenage years, Ellie took part in a civil rights action called SCOPE, an acronym for the Summer Community Organization and Political Education project. This project enlisted young men and women to speak to unregistered voters and advise them of the soon-to-be-signed Voters Rights Law. During her time with SCOPE, she meets and falls in love with a young African-American man named Win who is later dragged away by members of the KKK and never heard from again.

One day while having fencing installed, remains are discovered. It is later determined that the remains are those of Win and they must discover who took the young man's life. Secrets are revealed and relationships are torn apart.

If you would like to pre-order this book, please click on the cover up above to go to its Amazon page.

[rmarcin-630843 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book which brings the events of the current day into focus along events of the turbulent history of the country. In the 60s, Ellie, a promising pharmacy student, becomes involved in the civil rights movement, much to the dismay of her family. Now, 60 years later, Kayla is planning to move into the house next to Ellie's childhood home, and is being warned away. Kayla doesn't understand why someone is so adamant about keeping her away. Finally, as Ellie's story is told, and the sins and bigotry of the community is revealed, Kayla begins to see why the house is being targeted. Especially now, as voting rights are being attacked, this story is a timely read. The hatred and the mentality that one race is better than another has to stop. Diane Chamberlain has written another masterful story of American history. Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this book, all opinions are my own and freely given.

[mookie86 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my favorite books of the year. First time reading Diane Chamberlain - really enjoyed the way she weaved and linked stories of the past and present all while developing characters that you root for and against at different times throughout. Mystery and intrigue keep you wrapped in throughout, and the history, and sadness and shock comes with it, create a very well-rounded novel. 5 starsThank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

[dannalora_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was one of her good ones. It was a great read until her Acknowledgements where she has a political dig that is totally inaccurate, and that’s unfortunate. Otherwise I would have given it 4.5 stars.

[marquis784-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Alternating timelines which explain a complex relationship between the mysterious events between the past and present in Round Hill and Shadow Ridge Estate.

In 2010, Kayla Carter reluctantly moves into the beautiful new home that she built with her now deceased husband, Jackson and 3 year old Rainie. Kayla and Jackson worked as architects and built their dream home at the end of the street in the new development called Shadow Ridge. Once she begins moving into the new home without her husband who suffered a fatal fall while building the house, she encounters resistance from locals who believe the house should never have been built.

The story transitions to 1965 to provide the historical aspect of Round Hill many years ago in North Carolina during the turmoil of the civil rights and prejudice. During this time, Ellie becomes involved with wanting to carry on her Aunt Carol’s legacy as an activist for civil rights. She decides to join a group SCOPE who are white students organized to help Negroes register to vote. It’s a dangerous and controversial decision for Ellie which isolates her from family and friends.

The past and present collide when Kayla meets Ellie who has returned to help care for her elderly mother and dying brother, Buddy. Many mysterious events in the present are revealed which relate to traumatic events of the past in Round Hill. It’s an important story about family, history, and reparations.

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from NetGalley and St Martin’s Press. This review is my voluntary unbiased opinion.

[debs4jc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This dual timeline book offers a blend of historical fiction and suspense that really sucked me in. In the present a woman is about to move into the house that she and her late husband built together in a new subdivision when she gets an odd and creepy warning from a strange woman who visits her office. In the past, a college student becomes involved in the civil rights movement, much to the chagrin of her family. As one young woman faces danger from bigots, the other wonders what secrets lie hidden in the woods just outside of her new house - and if those secrets pose a threat to her and her daughter. Gradually the two timelines come together, as the woman from the present digs into the past and uncovers it's secrets. The historical story is powerful - a tale of an idealistic woman who wants to help the black people of her community but then learns how violent people she has always known can become. The slow revealing of past secrets keeps the suspense high through this story, I highly recommend this to those who like thrillers and those who like historical fiction.

[khoyt-43756 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"The Last House on the Street" is an informative novel on the abuses of life of Blacks during the pre-Voting Rights Act of 1965. I lived in the North at the time. I saw the news features on TV. I remember when the three civil rights men were murdered. Ms. Chamberlain goes deeper, though. The heroine is determined to make a difference in the lives of the black people in her community. The author describes what life was like in the rural South back then. In her dual-time novel, we see how far-reaching the effects of racism and bigotry can be to this day. This book is informative, tragic, and eerie. It is a good read for anyone wanting to know more about this time in our country's history.Reviewer's note: In her author's note, Ms. Chamberlain expresses her concern about Republican legislators trying to change voting laws to make it harder for people of color to vote. I live in Georgia and can tell you that is not true here. I would also like Ms. Chamberlain to research the origins of the KKK. I think she will find it to be the enforcement arm of the Democrat party. I believe if we want to help save our country we should work at polling places and maybe even run for local government positions to enable us to right what we believe are wrongs with our country.

[pegmcdaniel · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have read two of Diane Chamberlain's novels which I loved and have two on my TBR shelf. Her latest novel is an intense and emotional read. There are two timelines, 1965 and 2010. The author does a great job of keeping the story interesting while switching timelines nearly every other chapter. In 1965, Ellie, a well-to-do, 20-year-old, White college student decides to help with SCOPE (Summer Community Organization and Political Education Project) much to the dismay of her family and friends. The SCOPE program is for college students volunteering to canvas Black neighborhoods to get them to register to vote. Mostly Black students, but also a few White students, from northern communities come to North Carolina to work on this program. So Ellie defies her family, starts working with SCOPE, and is an outcast right from the start but is dedicated and passionate about helping.In 2010, Kayla, a widowed architect with a 3-year-old daughter, is ready to move into the house she and her husband (also an architect) designed. Her husband died in an accident at the house when it was being built. Weird things start happening to Kayla and she becomes afraid to move into the house. However, she does move in and mysterious things continue to happen.There are two stories here with two points-of-view and we soon know they will become intertwined because of a decades-long, unsolved murder, Even though the two women are a generation apart, they are united by tragedy. This novel is very educational and informative. The author's note tells of her research for this novel and that much of it is true. You will read about prejudice, racism, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Ku Klux Klan in NC.

[flourgirl49 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An excellent novel about a relevant subject - civil rights activism in the 1960s and the repercussions that were still affecting people nearly 50 years later. One quibble: at the end, there seems to be a lack of accountability for a crime that was committed, and I found that disconcerting. Nevertheless, it's a riveting read and one of Diane Chamberlain's best books!

[maydacat_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It’s 1965. Ellie has grown up in Round Hill, North Carolina, well off, and on the road to a successful, if predetermined, life. Her mother wants her to marry well, and her father wants her to become a pharmacist. Through the influence of an aunt, and by her own convections, she is drawn to the plight of the less fortunate, specifically, the civil rights of black people. She devotes a summer to help register black people to vote. Though warned during the training period that these young people have a job to do, that they must be vigilant against those who want to stop this movement, and that they must not fall in love, Ellie and Winston cannot stop their attraction to each other. But their love comes at a great cost, since she is white and he is black. It’s 2010. Architect Kayla Carter has lost her husband in a freak accident while building their dream house in Round Hill. Still, she moves in with her young daughter. But a strange woman tries to warn her that she shouldn’t live there. And then peculiar acts of vandalism target her home. Threatening notes are left for her, and she fears for the safety of her child. These two stories about two very different women converge into a cohesive and riveting tale as their connection is finally revealed. It’s a dynamic story that recounts the problems of the south as desegregation enters into the lives of certain white neighborhoods. Voting rights in the 60’s are the catalyst for Ellie to see just how bigoted her family and neighbors are. Her eyes are opened, but the minds of others remained firmly closed, even into the 21st century. Long held secrets are finally revealed, but the wounds they caused have long lasting effects. The story is quite well written, with strong female protagonists, well developed characters, and a very good sense of the setting in the two time periods. This is a book you won’t want to put down, and carries a message you won’t soon forget.

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Last House on the Street, Diane Chamberlain, author; Susan Bennett, narrator.Diane Chamberlain has merged two disparate threads of a story together, perfectly. It is read with perfect pitch by the narrator, to present a really authentic picture of the struggle for civil rights and voting rights in the sixties. In a story that almost seems to be masquerading as a romance or a mystery, for me it turned out to be an exposé on those difficult times. Each character feels truly defined by the tone and emphasis of the narrator, which adds honesty and credibility to this novel. Highlighting one particular year in the 1960’s, as the story moves back and forth in time from 1965-2010, Chamberlain shines a light on the lives of two very different women, both deeply affected by the current events of that time in the sixties, that time of landmark changes to the political landscape of freedom and justice. In 1965, we meet Ellie Hockley, who lives on a street named for her family. It is the only house on Hockley Street. She is a Pharmacology student at the University of North Carolina, in 1965. At the age of 20, very much against her parents’ wishes, she joined an activist group called SCOPE, which stood for the Summer Community Organization and Political Education Project. She participated actively in their very dangerous struggle to prepare people of color to register to vote; this right was coming just as soon as President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law. However, during her month of hard work, in which she was truly devoted to the cause, she also became devoted to Winston Madison, a young, handsome black man with whom she partnered in their work, and they both broke the cardinal rule of not getting involved with someone of a different race. Their love put his life in danger. The very active Ku Klux Klan, would not look favorably upon their relationship, nor would their SCOPE’s pastor leader, Reverend Greg Filburn, or her family. Ellie had been very much influenced by the thinking of her activist Aunt Carol, who was now deceased. Carol had often been mocked for her belief in freedom and opportunity for all, something Ellie had always taken for granted and was shocked to learn was not really granted to all who might desire it. She was very naïve, but a product of, and very typical of, people who were against the existence of any relationships between the races, personal or public. Some of those kinds of people might still exist today. As a young child, I was not aware of the way “Negroes” were treated in the South and other parts of the country, because in fact, few were part of my world. The book truly presents the attitude of those who didn’t think of themselves as racist, but also never questioned why the only black person ever welcomed into their home was, perhaps, the housekeeper.In 2010, we meet Kayla Carter, in her late twenties. She now lives in the same town as Ellie, Round Hill, and is moving to a development planned for Hockley Street. She was recently widowed when her husband Jackson, stepped on some screws left on the floor by a construction worker. He fell to his death in the house they had both lovingly designed as up and coming successful architects. The property on which their house stood had secrets that revealed a great deal about the history of relationships and racism in that North Carolina town of Round Hill. The growing-up experiences were quite different for the two women, but both women were haunted by pain. Ellie Hockley was haunted by a childhood tragedy. Kayla Carter was haunted by her husband’s sudden death and a visit from a strange and menacing woman who seemed to know all about her and seemed to be threatening her well-being, and that of her daughter Rainie, if she moved into her new home on Hockley Street. In this town with an active chapter of the KKK, located on the original Hockley property there was a lake with a tragic history and a clearing with an infamous history. There was also a tree house which plays an important part in the novel, and once again, that tree has a racist history. As secrets are revealed, the activity of the KKK is highlighted and it is hard to read about because of the terrible injustices they inflicted upon innocent people without any remorse whatsoever. The willful naïveté of Ellie and her friend Winston, is hard to swallow, when they had both been trained well to avoid confrontation with white people who resented any interracial activity. Ellie’s family and her best friend Brenda Cleveland, married to Garner Cleveland, beg her to come home and stop hanging around with the Negroes. They tell her that her boyfriend misses her, but she is undeterred. Tragedies abound in the book, as a very vivid picture of clan activity and local racism is revealed.Ellie had gone to California and had not returned. Forty-five years later she came back to care for her terminally ill brother, Buddy, whom she adored. She even took her mother out of the assisted living facility she had been living in, and brought her home, although that relationship was mutually strained. Kayla and Jackson had been searching for a place to build a home in the same town that her dad, Reed Miller, and then she, had grown up in, and where he still lived. Their home was the first finished and she found moving in without her husband was difficult. Each of the women would be at one end of the street. Kayla’s dad, Reed Miller, and Ellie Hockley were the same age, 65. Were their lives intermingled?Although both women were raised at a time of great promise, both had very different experiences. One was raised during the time of Martin Luther King and the other during the time of Barack Obama. Both were connected to Round Hill and Hockley Street, but both viewed the world through a different lens. Using the mystery as the vehicle to tell this story, a very real tale of racism is uncovered. I questioned the use of one word in the novel. At the end, when Klan activity is exposed, the author uses the term maggots to describe them. I wondered if it was a conscious choice to draw an inference to the homophone MAGAts, that some people have adopted. I thought it odd, since it was Senator Byrd, definitely not a member of Trump’s MAGA camp, who rode with the barbaric KKK. I thought that even though the plot was obvious, and sometimes felt like a fairy tale, the author rolled the story out very well and the ultimate conclusion was really eye-opening, as it revealed the truth about hidden fury and hate.

[brangwinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In a book spanning two time periods, Chamberlain takes us to North Carolina where in 1965, the college-aged daughter of the town’s druggist becomes involved in the Civil Rights movement and getting Blacks registered to vote. Ellie’s family is furious that she would do this. Her involvement with a young black man gets him killed and she ends up in San Francisco, only to return 40 some years later to care for her ailing brother and her fragile mother. In 2010, Kayla, a recent widow moves into their dream home, built on property bordering that of Ellie’s family. Kayla is constantly facing actions which are attempting to force her to move. She becomes friends with Ellie and is confronted not only with the fact that her father and Ellie were almost an engaged couple in the 1960’s but she and Ellie come face to face with the history of the local Ku Klux Clan and who was involved in the death of Ellie’s Black friend. Taunt and fast-paced, the reader becomes involved in a gripping story of how the past impacts the future.

[dianekeenoy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

You can never go wrong with a Diane Chamberlain book and this is no exception!

[grandmacootie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another must-read! Author Diane Chamberlain is a long-time favorite of mine, so I know just how good she is, how affecting and spellbinding her novels are. It’s not as if I forget that in between novels, but just a few pages in I am always reminded of just how exceptional her writing is; good doesn’t even come close to covering it. Her stories have an indescribable “feel” that lets you know you are in for another rare, exhilarating, rewarding reading experience. The Last House on the Street is no exception.The main characters are Ellie in 1965 and Kayla in 2010. Chamberlain is as good as they get at writing dual time periods. She moves seamlessly back and forth between time periods, tying all the pieces and people together. She does such a good job of pulling you along, guiding you through that you are so involved in the story, enjoying the flow, the pacing, the unfolding of events, your detective hat is not on, and then all of a sudden it’s whoa, is that who I think it is? Is that event tied to that event? Are we in the same place that the other thing happened?Ellie is an innocent, sheltered, naïve young woman, the product of her Southern upbringing in 1965. But her heart is in the right place and her convictions are unshakable. This is the beginning of the civil rights movement and she is determined to be involved, to make a difference. Little does she realize how trying to do the right thing will turn out. She can’t even begin to conceive of what is buried beneath the surface of her seemingly idyllic life.Kayla isn’t innocent; she’s a recent widow with a young child whose joyously anticipated move into her dream home with her husband is now an endurance test. She wants to honor his memory, to learn to live in the home they so carefully and lovingly designed together, but it’s hard. Very hard. Especially hard when suspicious activity and suspicious people appear around her house and the deep, dark woods behind it. And neither can Kayla conceive of what took place in this quiet, welcoming town and just how close to her present those shocking events of the past are.The Last House on the Street is swiftly paced and well-crafted. It’s one of those stories where you don’t want to know too much when you start reading, because discovering each connection, each “coincidence,” each tie from the past to the present, is so rewarding. Chamberlain has something special, hard to describe but easy to feel. Maybe her pre-writer life as a social worker and psychotherapist account for it, but whatever it is, she knows people and the emotional power of a story.Thanks to St. Martin’s Press for providing an advance copy of The Last House on the Street via NetGalley for my reading pleasure and honest review. This story has become another cherished part of my Diane Chamberlain library. I can’t recommend it enough, and I will be purchasing the audiobook because the combination of Diane Chamberlain’s words & Susan Bennett’s voice is unbeatable. All opinions are my own.

[jfe16 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shadow Ridge Estates, a new development in Round Hill, North Carolina, was supposed to be Kayla Carter’s dream home, but an accident during its construction claimed the life of her husband, Jackson. Torn about moving into the just-completed house, she knows she must remain strong for their three-year-old daughter, Rainie.While working at Bader and Duke Design, Kayla receives an unexpected visit from a strange woman who seems to have far too much intimate knowledge about her family; she also hints at knowing a great deal about Round Hill and Shadow Ridge Estates. Shaken, Kayla asks her to leave.But the strange woman isn’t the only one who knows a great deal about Kayla, her family, and the area. Ellie Hockley, now sixty-five years old, has come to Round Hill from her home in San Francisco to care for her ailing brother, Buddy, and their mother, Pat. Their house, at the other end of the street, is as old as Kayla’s is new.Partly because of the difficulty of moving into the house without Jackson, partly because of the mysterious woman with her strange message and her nerve-wracking threat, Kayla feels trepidation about moving into the new house. But she’s determined to make a home for Rainie, so she settles into the first completed house in Shadow Ridge Estates.But vandals target Kayla’s home and leave threatening notes. The woods and the lake behind the house, rumored to be haunted, feel vaguely menacing to Kayla. It doesn’t help that, although Ellie welcomed her, the woman seems to be holding both resentments and secrets. Are they about the house? The people? The town?Will Kayla ever feel comfortable in Shadow Ridge Estates? Will she be able to make a home for herself and her daughter in Round Hill?=========A strong sense of place, nuanced, believable [but not always likable] characters, and an absorbing storyline pull readers into the telling of the tale from the outset. Told in two separate timelines, Kayla’s story unfolds in 2010 while the majority of Ellie’s story takes place in 1965. Both storylines are intense; both feature folks with closely-held secrets in a place where prejudice, hatred, violence, and tragedy will all play integral roles in the telling of the tale.Ellie Hockley, a sophomore pharmacology student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, becomes involved in the civil rights movement and desperately wants to participate in the project to register African Americans to vote. She’s willing to go against her parents’ wishes to participate and does so even though she does not realize the high price that she will ultimately pay for her involvement. Kayla’s role in the dual timeline story finds her dealing with the ghosts of the past . . . and the woods around her house . . . as she tries to settle into her new home.Many of the events occurring in Ellie’s 1965 story are true. President Lyndon B. Johnson did sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in early August of that year; the SCOPE [Summer Community Organization and Political Education] project was a program that brought college students to six southern states to help register African Americans to vote.It’s a sad commentary on society that also true are the bitter hatreds, the entitled attitudes of the white supremacists, and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan with their rallies, cross burnings, and abject terror they created.Tension runs high throughout the narrative, readers will find themselves appalled at some of the events that take place, and, as the two storylines eventually merge, the revelations surrounding the harrowing truth are absolutely gut-wrenching. The history in the story told here is real; the telling of this tale exposes all of its ugliness.And yet, readers will find it impossible to set the book aside before turning the final page. It’s a riveting story that is all but impossible to forget. This is a book that belongs on every reader’s to-be-read list.Highly recommended.

[kris_anderson-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain is a dual-timeline novel. We meet Ellie a twenty-year old woman who signs up for the SCOPE project. Kayla in 2010 is a recent widow with a young daughter. Her husband died before their dream home was completed. It is the only house in a new development and Kayla is warned away. Just outside the development is a home that has been there for three generations and the dying owner refuses to sell. After Kayla moves into her new home, she meets Ellie Hockley who grew up in the old home and they become friends. Kayla can tell, though, that Ellie has secrets. Something happened in this area almost fifty years ago. Is it time for the secret to come to light? The Last House on the Street contains good writing, but I thought the pacing was slow. As I kept reading, I was wondering if the book would ever get moving. I enjoyed Ellie’s story more than Kayla’s. Ellie’s story tells of the bigotry, violence, and hatred that was prevalent in the south during this time. There was a great deal of unrest in the south. It was interesting learning about the SCOPE project. Ellie’s character was significantly more developed than Kayla’s. For most of the book, Kayla is unnecessary. Her character lacked emotion and depth. As I read, I could soon see how everything tied together and how the story would play out. I wish the storyline had not been so obvious. I had trouble getting through the first two thirds of the book because of the slow pacing and there was little action up to this point. The ending nicely wrapped up the story. This was not my favorite Diane Chamberlain story. It was not the same caliber as her last novel. The Last House on the Street is an emotional and dramatic story that will take you back to 1965 in North Carolina.

[penny_l-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a thought provoking thriller!Alternating between the timelines of modern day south and the 1960's civil rights movement, an intriguing plot unfolds as the narrative connects the two stories.The historical portions are well researched, and each chapter moves fairly quickly keeping the suspense building and tension mounting.A gripping tale of secrets, betrayal, romance, hatred and hope.*Thank you St. Martin's Press, Diane Chamberlain and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

[fredreeca · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Kayla and her husband have built their dream home. It is where they plan to spend the rest of their lives and raise a family, until her husband has a fatal accident in the home. Kayla is left floundering. Can she move in, can she continue on. Then she has a strange visitor. A mysterious woman shows up at her place of work. She basically threatens Kayla and her daughter to stay away from her new home.This novel is set in two separate time lines, 1965 and present day. I enjoyed the present day more than 1965…that is…until the end. It all comes together with a big gasp or two or three!This story is complicated and emotional. The tension in both timelines will have you absorbed completely into this haunting tale. The mystery and the buried secrets will have you engrossed until the very end. And to tell you the truth…this story will stay with you for a while. I went into a reading slump after this!Well, Diane Chamberlain has done it again! Need a dang good read…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

[carolesrandomlife · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was truly a wonderful book! I have heard great things about this author’s work but for one reason or another I had never actually picked one up myself so this was my first experience with her work. To say that I am impressed would be an understatement. This book not only entertained me it made me think and sometimes made me rather uncomfortable. Diane Chamberlain definitely has a new fan.This book is told from two different points of view. Kayla’s point of view is set in 2010. Kayla is a young widow and mother of a small child. She is ready to move into the home that she designed with her husband in a new development but feels uneasy about the move. Ellie’s story takes place in 1965. Ellie signs up to be a part of the SCOPE program that wants to help the black community register to vote. She is assigned to live in the community with a black family and is able to experience the poverty that they live with on a daily basis.I have often found that when a book is told in dual timelines, I usually gravitate towards one timeline more than the other. With this book, I enjoyed both timelines equally and when they finally came together I was in awe of how perfectly the pieces all seemed to fit. I found myself thinking of this story when I wasn’t reading and am angry at the injustices that the characters endured. I thought that descriptions were quite vivid and helped to bring an emotional element to the story.I would highly recommend this book to others. I thought that it told a powerful story that will stay with me for a while. I will definitely be reading more of this author’s work in the future.I received a digital review copy of this book from St. Martin’s Press.

[jhscolloquium · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In 1965, twenty-year-old Ellie Hockley has been dating Reed, who is earning fast promotions at the local bank, for four years and everyone, including Reed, expects them to marry. Round Hill, North Carolina is a close-knit community in which the residents are all acquainted and knew each other's business. Her parents are unaware that while serving as a reporter and photographer for the University of North Carolina's newspaper, Ellie was assigned to cover a protest against segregated business establishments. As Ellie and her lifelong best friend, Brenda, watched the students, professors, and townspeople kneeling side by side in the street, blocking traffic, Ellie took pictures and found herself "moved by their quiet courage." Ellie was influenced by her late Aunt Carol, a champion of civil rights who took part in the 1963 March on Washington at which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke. "Impulsively, before I had a chance to change my mind," Ellie relates, "I took my place at the end of the line -- which was in the gutter -- and got down on my knees" next to Gloria, the only black woman in her pharmacology class. Home for the summer, Ellis is expected to work in her father's pharmacy. Listening to him read the newspaper, she learns that SCOPE will be comprised of more than five hundred volunteers canvassing seventy-five rural counties "with the aim of removing racism from American politics." Only thirty-four percent of black voters are registered, so SCOPE participants will be trained to encourage and assist them to register. "I knew in a way I couldn't explain even to myself . . . that I was going to be one of those white students working to register Negro voters. I knew it the way I knew my own name," Ellie recalls.But in 2010, Kayla Carter is mourning her husband, Jackson, and steeling herself to move into the home they designed. The staircase in that home is where Jackson died tragically, leaving Kayla to raise their daughter, Rainie, alone. Kayla feels trapped. She dreads living in the house without Jackson, but doesn't want strangers to live in it, either. The new subdivision in which it sits, Shadow Ridge Estates, is on the outskirts of Round hill. With expansive windows, it is the only house in the new development that has been completed, situated at the end of the road. Behind it are dark woods -- "straight out of a Grimms' fairy tale." Just up the street, the old Hockley house is still occupied by Buddy Hockley, Ellie's brother, who refuses to sell to the developer. Growing up, the Hockley kids "just about lived in those woods, climbing trees, playing hide-and-seek, and fishing in the lake." They even had a tree house in an enormous oak tree. Kayla discovers it's still there and, unbeknownst to her, Jackson renovated it. Kayla's father, Reed Miller, admits that he hoped Kayla and Jackson would not build their home in the new development because, as a kid, he and his friends thought the woods were haunted. In fact, there remains a circular clearing in the woods where the local KKK used to meet in secret. Kayla is shocked when he tells her, "I knew some of those Klansmen. Back then, a lot of otherwise upstanding people in town belonged." Kayla also remains rattled by the unsettling visit to her office from a woman who called herself Anna Smith and appeared to be disguised. She refused to remove her sunglasses and wore a red wig. She knew about Jackson's death, Rainie, and the new house. Speaking in a deep, raspy voice, she told Kayla, "No one should've put a house there to begin with. All those new houses. They don't belong. But especially that one. Yours." Worse, she claimed she has been "thinking about killing someone. I've been thinking about it for a long, long time. Years and years and years. And now I have the chance." Author Diane Chamberlain compellingly recounts the experiences of the two women through alternating first-person narratives. Ellie convinces the local minister at the A.M.E. church to let her be part of SCOPE, even though the students selected are only supposed to be Northerners. He fears that Ellie's involvement might adversely impact the program, but her conviction wins him over. Her parents, Buddy, and Brenda are all horrified, disapproving, and worried about their own standing in the community when she announces her plans for the summer, but she will not be dissuaded. She completes the training and is partnered with Winston Madison, a young black junior at Shaw University in Raleigh who, in contrast to Ellie, is assigned to the area precisely because he is from the county and knows the people who live there. SCOPE's mission is fraught with dangers that Chamberlain details from Ellie's perspective. She is well-meaning, but naive and idealistic. In various ways, as initially feared, Ellie's presence complicates the volunteers' efforts, despite her earnest desire to help bring about change. Ellie's experiences serve as a poignant reminder of life in the South during the tumultuous 1960's as the civil rights movement gained momentum in America. She is shocked to learn that North Carolina has "more Klan members that all the other states put together," and that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and looming enactment of the Voting Rights Act are causing them to enhance their efforts to maintain the segregated status quo.And in 2010, Ellie and Kayla come face to face when Kayla sees Ellie at the Hockley house and stops to introduce herself. Kayla is mystified by Ellie's strange reaction when she learns that Kayla is the daughter of Reed Miller. Ellie has returned to Round Hill for the first time in forty-five years. She has been living in San Francisco where she teaches yoga. Now she is back in North Carolina to care for her mother and Buddy, who is terminally ill. As strange and disturbing events disrupt Kayla's efforts to settle into her new residence, Chamberlain reveals how young Ellie's life unravels as a result of her feelings, choices, and refusal to conform to the expectations of her family and friends.Chamberlain's two narratives merge as Kayla learns about Ellie and Reed's history, as well as what actually took place in the woods that long-ago summer. Chamberlain's story is full of her signature twists and shocking revelations. Young Ellie is endearing and sympathetic, but clearly inviting tragedy as she stubbornly refuses to see the world as it should be, rather than how it is. Chamberlain credibly illustrates how dramatically different the Ellie who returns to Round Hill is from the young woman who turned her back on her home and family forty-five years ago, although not even Ellie knows the whole truth until the story's jaw-dropping ending. Kayla is equally empathetic. She is a young, grieving widow intent on keeping her daughter safe who finds herself at the center of a mystery she could never have anticipated. Every supporting character is believable -- Chamberlain expertly conveys the political climate through characters who seem despicable with the benefit of hindsight but, in their own estimation, were justified in taking whatever measures necessary in order to preserve their way of life. In The Last House on the Street, Chamberlain smartly tackles contemporary issues by relating a tale set fifty-seven years ago. The ongoing fight for voting rights is in the headlines on a daily basis, as politics figure prominently into "what should be a basic American right" but still isn't in far too many regions of the United States. The Last House on the Street is a powerful commentary not just about the ongoing struggle for voting rights, but also about racism, social injustice, and the freedom to love whomever one chooses. It is heartbreaking and memorable as a result of Chamberlain's restrained telling of a cleverly-plotted, riveting story -- neither of her narratives lapses into a preachy or self-righteous tone. Rather, Chamberlain lets the villains in her tale self-identify through deftly-timed revelations of their reprehensible beliefs and actions. True to Chamberlain's style, The Last House on the Street is an exploration of relationships, particularly with respect to Ellie, who tragically comes-of-age with the knowledge that not all relationships can or should be long-lasting, even though we carry the memories of them and the lessons we learned from them with us for the rest of our lives.Thanks to NetGalley for an Advance Reader's Copy of the book.

[wvteddy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is an excellent historical fiction novel that will stay with you for a long time. The story is told in alternating chapters by Kayla Carter, a present day architect whose husband died in a fall while building their dream house, and Ellie Hockley, a 20 year old North Carolina girl who spent the summer of 1965 participating in the SCOPE program to register black voters. The time is one in which many white Americans remained blissfully unaware, reading about riots and marches on the news but not directly affected by them. Even Ellie, who lived there, was unaware of the Negroes near her. The book shows us the conditions they lived in and the fear they lived in as Ellie experiences it. We see just how predominant the KKK was in North Carolina and what KKK rallies were like. You can feel the fear and the hatred through the author's words and Ellie's actions. The mystery in the book comes through the connection between these two main characters. Ms Chamberlain developed these characters into women who feel like friends. Her depictions of the surrounding countryside make you feel like you are there. It was a book I could not put down. I was a teenager at the time and the news did not report instantly on every little thing like now. I realize I too was blissfully unaware of what was happening. Books like this, although fiction, can bring these times to life and are very worthwhile reading especially today.

[kimkimkim-7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Diane Chamberlain has nailed the difficult task of wrapping a murder mystery around a time of political upheaval. Count yourself lucky if you are too young to have lived then and/or have first hand knowledge of the horrors of the violent racial miasma that ran rampant in the United States in 1965. What am I even saying? It hasn’t gone away - it is in the news every other day - - the shame, the horror of hatred and blatant racism. Chamberlain doesn’t leave it at that, she also typifies the young who feel they have to address the unfairness and become involved, often rushing in with the best intentions while leaving the door open to disaster. Chamberlain makes sure we realize that zealots come in all shapes, sizes, genders, colors and attitudes. While Chamberlain has focused her attention on the near “Deep South” eschewing that the Carolinas are so much more progressive than the deep and dark prejudice and violence of Mississippi, Alabama, etc. those Satan Robes and Hoods are equally deadly in any State, and they existed in many including the Northeast.Not to detract from the current time line, the past is just so powerful that everything else struck me as just noise and background. This is a really interesting book that looks hard and long at the “then and now” and doesn’t flinch from exposing prejudices that don’t die but become better cloaked in the guise of gentility. The characters are not pencil sketches but deep depictions of those who hate, those who defend, those who churn and those who stand and fight. A powerful, thought provoking book.Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a copy.

[arlenadean · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Title: The Last House on the StreetAuthor: Diane ChamberlainPublisher: St Martin's PressReviewed By: Arlena DeanRating: FiveReview:"The Last House on the Street" by Diane ChamberlainMy Opinion:'The Last House on the Street' was quite a historical fiction. Mystery, suspenseful read with grief, and romance will draw one into Kayla Carter and Eleanor [Ellie] Hockley's story. Yes, this was about 'family, love, racism, and injustice.' We find that this was from Round Hill, North Carolina, in a neighborhood called Shadow Ridge Estates... of two timelines, 1965 and 2010. What was it about these two timelines that will direct how these characters are linked? Be ready for many surprises, along with twists and turns that will keep the reader turning the pages. For example, what will happen as Kayla finds out about her town and family. "What had happened on this land in 1965 that Kayla's father was trying to warn her about moving to this area that Kayla's husband had built for her?"And with Ellie living next door, how will these two connect? What did Ellie working with SCOPE do with it, and what happened to her family? One thing that is for sure this author did her research to give the reader quite a story. I'm not sure whom I felt sorrier for...With the subject being so involved with intense racism, Kayla or Ellie, the root of it all is emotional and heartbreaking. To get all of the answers to these questions and more, you must pick up "The Last House on the Street' to see how well this author brings us this read. It may take a while, but these two-time timelines do come together, giving the reader one heck of a story by the end.This story wasn't an easy read, definitely will stay with me, but it was a story worth telling, and using these dual timelines and multi-generations was well-done.Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC and my leaving my honest opinion.

[cassiesbooksreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Last House on the Street Is a Dual Time Mystery Novel by Diane Chamberlain set in 1965 and 2010. It is an emotional story of love, loss, and a portrayal of how actions can change lives for generations.This is a well written story with interesting characters but there were some parts of the story that were unrealistic. For example it was odd that 1965 Ellie thought people were poor and did not have indoor toilets or electricity because they did not vote or involve themselves in politics. Was Ellie so naive at 20 that she did not know that there were many people both black and white still using outhouses in the 1960’s and 1970’s? Ellie’s historical storyline seemed to be more focused on solving poverty rather than the infringement of rights. However the story does address many of the evil practices of the KKK and the lack of punishment for their crimes.I really enjoyed the suspense, mystery surrounding the characters, the house, and the suspicious relationships. The time periods and storylines were woven together well.I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. I appreciate the opportunity and thank the author and publisher for allowing me to read, enjoy and review this book. 4 Stars

[tamidale · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Readers who enjoyed Dianne Chamberlain’s Big Lies in A Small Town will very likely enjoy this latest release just as much. Once again, Chamberlain merges past and present from two storylines.In the present day, Kayla Carter has just moved into the dream home that she and her late husband built. The move was an emotional one and Kayla questioned if she should just sell the house and not move in. But it’s so beautiful and it was a project she and her late husband built together, so for that reason, she goes ahead and moves in.Not long after the move, some things happen that are very unsettling and make Kayla question her decision. During this time, she meets her neighbors who live down the street in an older home. The home is owned by the Hockley family. Ellie Hockley lives there temporarily, taking care of her elderly mother and an older brother.As Kayla and Ellie become acquainted, they begin to realize they have a connection. Reluctantly, Ellie tells Kayla of the past history the land holds and how Kayla’s father and Ellie are connected, as well as why Ellie left the area.There is some shocking race-related violence in the story, but nothing is extremely graphic. Set in 1960’s North Carolina , knowing how the social mores were at the time, should be a clue to what secrets this book will reveal about Ellie Hockley’s life.This was a wonderful mix of historical fiction and mystery that I think readers will find compelling.Many thanks to NetGalley and St.Martin’s Press for allowing me to read an advance copy. I am happy to give my honest review.

[carole888fort · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I will remember The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain for a long time. The story takes place in North Carolina during two periods of time. In 1965 Ellie plans to spend her college summer break to help in the registration of black voters, which will turn her family and friends against her. In 2010 Kayla, a young architect, is moving into her dream home that she and her late husband designed. The paths of the two women will cross when Kayla moves down the road from Ellie and it seems that there is much opposition to the move. Ellie’s past appears to be related to the land that Kayla’s new home occupies. Horrific crimes of the sixties will affect both women. The poverty, bigotry, cruelty and violence of that time will bring their lives full circle in the new millennium. This is a very difficult read but remembering the past can help bring better attitudes in the present. Diane Chamberlain has written about a very painful subject with her usual sensitivity. Highly recommended. Thank you to St. Martin’s Press, NetGalley and the author for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[lorikboyd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another compelling story by Diane Chamberlain. This book touches on a 45 year old mystery, a current day stalker, racism, freedom fighters and the KKK, using dual timelines of 1965 and 2010. Centered in NC. The author opens one’s eyes to living in the south in 1965, to the Era of MLK and SCOPE (Summer Community Organization and Political Education) a group of black and white college kids that were trying to bring the voter registration process to blacks while the Voter Rights Act was pending. I had never heard about this group so found it very interesting. Our eyes are again opened wide as the author describes the horror, fear and injustice of this time. It was hard to read. As with all this author’s books, it is well researched with excellent characters and development. I can remember watching MLK on TV with my Dad as he tried to explained to a 6 year old what was happening and why. I love when a book has a great story, but also when it educates. I highly recommend this book. The modern day stalker issue is scary and realistic. The storylines intersect nicely and keep both stories are equally compelling. Thanks to Ms Chamberlain, St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for this ARC. Opinion is mine alone.