THE WOMEN WHO NEVER LEFT

THE WOMEN WHO NEVER LEFT Psychological Thriller / Romantic Betrayal / Gothic Mystery / Emotional Suspense Haunting, intimate, tense, emotionally devastating, seductive, and increasingly claustrophobic. Sometimes the past does not repeat itself because history is cursed. It repeats because someone has spent years making sure the truth stays buried. Seven women entered Blackwater House. Six disappeared. The seventh spent twenty-five years pretending she was dead. Thirty-one-year-old Elena Marlowe, a struggling true-crime writer, receives the opportunity that could finally save her career. Billionaire hotel heir Adrian Vale has purchased Blackwater House, an abandoned mansion on a private island off the coast of Maine. Twenty-five years earlier, the mansion became the center of one of America's most notorious unsolved mysteries. Seven young women attended a private weekend retreat there. By Monday morning, six had vanished. No bodies were ever discovered. Only six white nightgowns were found hanging from trees surrounding the mansion. The seventh woman, Celeste Arden, supposedly escaped-but disappeared from public life immediately afterward. Now Adrian plans to reopen Blackwater House as an exclusive luxury hotel. Before doing so, he invites six women connected to the original victims to spend seven nights inside the mansion while Elena documents the experience for a bestselling book. But on the first night, Elena finds something waiting on her bed. A white nightgown. And stitched into its collar are the words: YOU WERE ALWAYS THE SEVENTH.