THE NEW NEIGHBOR

A darkly sophisticated novel about an old woman’s curiosity turned into a dangerous obsession as she becomes involved in her new neighbor’s complicated and cloaked life.

Ninety-year-old Margaret Riley is content hiding from the world. Stoic and independent, she rarely leaves the Tennessee mountaintop where she lives, finding comfort in the mystery novels that keep her company..... that is, until she spots a woman who’s moved into the long-empty house across the pond. Jennifer Young is also looking to hide. On the run from her old life, she and her four-year-old son Milo have moved to a quiet town where no one from her past can find her. In Jennifer, Margaret sees both a potential companion in her loneliness and a mystery to be solved. But Jennifer refuses to talk about herself, her son, his missing father, or her past. Frustrated, Margaret crosses more and more boundaries in pursuit of the truth, threatening to unravel the new life Jennifer has so painstakingly created—and reveal some secrets of her own. Leah Stewart is the author of the acclaimed novels THE HISTORY OF US, HUSBAND AND WIFE, and THE MYTH OF YOU AND ME. Leah Stewart was born in 1973 in Texas, lived in Virginia, Idaho, England, Kansas, and Virginia. She went to the MFA program at the University of Michigan, and then moved to Boston, to work for the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She has worked as a secretary at Duke, as a visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, and is the recipient of a 2010 NEA Literature Fellowship. She teaches in the University of Cincinnati’s creative writing program, and lives in Cincinnati with her husband and two children.