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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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English
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THE FALL OF LISA BELLOW

Susan Perabo

The book begins when a young middle-school girl is abducted in broad daylight while a fellow student witnesses the crime – thus setting off a gripping and hair-raising exploration of an unthinkable crime, told from two perspectives: the eyewitness and her mother.
When a masked man wielding a gun enters a sandwich shop in broad daylight, Meredith Oliver suddenly finds herself ordered to the filthy floor, and cowering face to face with her nemesis, Lisa Bellow, the most popular girl in her 8th grade class. The minutes tick inexorably by, and Meredith lurches between comforting the sobbing Lisa and imaging her own impending death. Then the man orders Lisa Bellow to stand and come with him, leaving Meredith the girl left behind. After Lisa Bellow’s abduction, Meredith spends most days in her room. Her old friends can’t understand her. Her mother, Claire, and her family can’t reach her. And yet Lisa Bellows’ popular friends can’t get enough of her. As the community stages vigils and searches, Claire toggles between jubilation that her own daughter is alive, and soul-sucking grief because Lisa is trapped in a nightmare that Claire can’t make right. And Meredith spends her time imaging her life as though she were taken. Trying to make sense out of the nonsensical.

Reminiscent of ROOM and THE LOVELY BONES, Susan Perabo moves us into a parallel world that is at once intimately familiar and chillingly speculative when the eyewitness to a crime channels the victim’s whereabouts. This is a dark and suspenseful story about coping, about family, about coming-of-age, and about forgiveness and healing.

Susan Perabo is the critically acclaimed author of the short story collections WHO I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE and WHY THEY RUN THE WAY THEY DO. WHO I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE was selected as a “Book of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald and the St. Louis Dispatch.
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Book

Published 2017-03-14 by Simon & Schuster

Book

Published 2017-03-14 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

Gripping…Perabo captures both the unease and bravado of adolescence alongside the worries of parenthood and is unafraid to explore the family members’ flaws as they attempt to emerge from chaos.

Were you ever an adolescent girl? I was. And I wouldn’t go back there for a million dollars. Except I just did, with Susan Perabo as my tour guide. In The Fall of Lisa Bellow, she earns her place as a bridge builder between generations, equally believable and relatable from the perspectives of a struggling teenager and her well-intentioned but flummoxed mom. I can’t wait to share this beautiful, funny and tragic page turner with my fifteen year-old. I just know it will spark the scintillating, honest conversation I’ve been waiting for!

The second novel from writer Susan Perabo is wrenching, a dark yet beautifully told story of family, fear and grief. Read more...

You will hate to leave the inside of this woman's head when you finish the book. The texture of family life as it unravels, then begins to regenerate, is conveyed with unflinching clarity and redemptive good humor.

Breathless as a thriller, this exhilarating novel shatters your heart then pieces it back together chapter by chapter until the last devastating sentence. In masterful and hypnotic prose, Perabo tells an unforgettable story of resilience as a family struggles to reconnect after their perfect world is torn apart by violence and loss. Psychologically insightful and emotionally engrossing, this is a story that will transform you from the inside out.

“Told through the incredibly honest eyes of an eighth grade girl and her despairing mother, this moving story touches on tragedy, loss, and what happens to those affected.”—RealSimple.com’s Best Books of March

Utterly captivating and achingly beautiful, The Fall of Lisa Bellow brilliantly explores the aftermath of ashocking abduction in an idyllic town, moving seamlessly between the rocky terrain of teenage grief and maternal guilt to show the ultimate redemptive power of love. It's a fantastic, thought-provoking novel.

British: Simon & Schuster UK

Sharp and suspenseful...The novel’s tension arises as much from Perabo’s insight into a complex and changing family dynamic as from the horror of an unusual but believable situation. Read more...

Absolutely masterful...this should be the book to launch Susan Perabo into the realm of Known Writers, those folks whose each new work marks the landscape in overt ways. All her powerful skills are on display here—the vivid, telling details, the strangely askance story actually being told, the murky irresolution that’s somehow gratifying despite not delivering on what most readers will likely expect...this is a dynamite, stunning book that’ll hang in you long after you finish it.

“Dark and suspenseful.”—Glamour.com’s Best Books To Read in 2017