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Summary
Summary
With the same page-turning suspense as The Girl on the Train and The Husband's Secret , New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison's No One Knows is a "riveting...skillfully plotted" ( Publishers Weekly ) thriller that questions if the narrator's husband really has returned from the dead--or if she's merely losing her mind.
Aubrey Hamilton has been mourning her missing husband for five years, despite being even while she was considered the prime suspect in his murder. But when he is officially declared dead, there are still more questions than answers: Why didn't Josh show up at his friend's bachelor party? Was he murdered, or did he run away? And who is the new, mysterious and strangely familiar figureman suddenly appearing in Aubrey's life? And has she finally lost her mind after years of loneliness and confusion?
No One Knows is an evocative mystery that explores the complex darkness within all of us, perfect for fans of Gillian Flynn, Liane Moriarty, and Paula Hawkins.
Author Notes
J. T. Ellison received an undergraduate degree from Randolph-Macon Woman's College and a master's degree from George Washington University. She was a presidential appointee and worked in The White House and the Department of Commerce before moving into the private sector.
Her short stories have been widely published, including her award winning story Prodigal Me in the anthology Killer Year: Stories to Die For, edited by Lee Child. Her novels include All the Pretty Girls, 14, Judas Kiss, The Cold Room, The Immortals, So Close the Hand of Death, and Where All the Dead Lie. She writes A Brit in the FBI series with Catherine Coulter. She is also the bi-monthly Friday columnist at the blog Murderati.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Schnaubelt's performance as Aubrey Hamilton, the dicey heroine of Ellison's standalone thriller, is entirely convincing. Aubrey bemoans the loss of her husband, Josh, who is declared legally dead at the start of the Nashville-set story. Schnaubelt's portrayal makes us feel the character's unbearable loss, loneliness, panic, and escalating anger as the story folds and unfolds, the current scenes intertwined with flashbacks to the days of her husband's disappearance five years earlier. We're given to understand that no one, including Aubrey, knows Josh's whereabouts. Voice actor Podehl soon pulls us into Josh's bouts of fear, jealousy, anguish, and treachery as Josh tries to extricate himself from a dangerous situation of his own making. Though the listener is sometimes bemused by tone changes and awkward plot complications, the story is an entertaining brainteaser with a surprising ending. A S&S/Gallery hardcover. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A woman begins to question everything she thought she knew when signs indicate that her husband, recently declared officially dead, is actually alive. For five years, Aubrey Hamilton has struggled to reconcile the facts about the last time she saw her husband, Josh, with his disappearance. They were a happy couple, childhood sweethearts despite his disapproving mother, and everything seemed fine when they parted ways at a friend's bachelor party. And then Josh was gone. He left behind only a sinister puddle of blood at their Nashville home, which led Aubrey to be tried for his murderthough she was acquitted, since it's hard to convict without a corpse. Now he's been declared legally dead, and Aubreyback at her job at a Montessori school and, like so many crime-fiction heroines, trying to literally run away from her past by, um, runningis dolefully reconciled to the fact that her husband is gone. She doesn't even want the $5 million life insurance policy he took out, naming her as his beneficiary. (The amount of that possible payout is so large that readers' ears should perk up.) Then she meets Chase Boden, a man with an uncanny resemblance to Josh, from his mannerisms to the way he walks, and Aubrey starts to wonder if Josh not only wasn't who he seemed to be, but might actually be alive. Ellison (What Lies Behind, 2015, etc.) goes to great lengths to explore the story from multiple points of view, which both expands the complex universe she's built and, unfortunately, deflates the suspense by spelling out that which the reader would rather deduce. The unreliable female narrator is all the rage, and Aubrey Hamilton is up there with the slipperiest of them all. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Aubrey Hamilton's husband, Josh, disappeared five years ago. She was initially accused of murdering him, but without a body, there was no proof. Josh's mom declares her son legally dead, and suddenly the grief consumes Aubrey again. After finally deciding to go on with her life, she begins to suspect that she is being watched. As in The Girl on the Train, to which this novel inevitably will be compared, the story line jumps back and forth in time as the reader becomes enthralled with Aubrey and her life while also desperate to learn answers. The payoff succeeds in surprising, but some readers may find the author guilty of unnecessary manipulation.--Ayers, Jeff Copyright 2016 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1 Aubrey Nashville Today One thousand eight hundred and seventy-five days after Joshua Hamilton went missing, the State of Tennessee declared him legally dead. Aubrey, his wife--or former wife, or ex-wife, or widow, she had no idea how to refer to herself anymore--received the certified letter on a Friday. It came to the Montessori school where she taught, the very one she and Josh had attended as children. Came to her door in the middle of reading time, borne on the hands of Linda Pierce, the school's long-standing principal, who looked as if someone had died. Which, in a way, they had. He had. Or so the State of Tennessee had officially declared. Aubrey had been against the declaration-of-death petition from the beginning. She didn't want Josh's estate settled. Didn't want a date engraved on that stupid family stone obelisk that loomed over the graves of his ancestors at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Didn't want to say good-bye forever. But Josh's mother had insisted. She wanted closure. She wanted to move on with her life. She wanted Aubrey to move on with hers, too. She'd petitioned the court for the early ruling, and clearly the courts agreed. Everyone was ready to move on. Everyone but Aubrey. She'd felt poorly this morning when she woke, almost a portent of the day to come, but today was the last day of school before spring break, so she had to show, and be cheery, and help the kids with their party, and give them their extra-credit reading assignments. From the second they arrived, her students buzzed around her. It didn't take long for Aubrey to catch the children's enthusiasm and drop her previous malaise. It was a beautiful day: the sun glowed in the sky, dropping beams through the windows, creating slats of light on the multihued carpet. The kids spun through the light, whirling dervishes against a yellow backdrop. She didn't even try to contain them; watching them, she felt exactly the same way. Breaks signaled many things to her, freedom most of all. Freedom to go her own way for a bit, to explore, to read, to gather herself. But when her classroom door opened unexpectedly, and Principal Pierce came into the room, the nausea returned with a vengeance, and her head started to pound. Aubrey watched her coming closer and closer. Her old friend's face was strained, the furrows carved into her upper lip collapsed in on each other, her yellowed forefinger tapping against the pristine white-and-blue envelope. She needed to file her nails. What was it about moments, the ones that start with a capital M , that made you notice each and every detail? Aubrey reminded herself of her situation. The children were watching. Trying to ignore the stares of the more precocious ones scattered about the classroom, gifted youngsters whose sensitivity to the emotions of others was finely honed, Aubrey took the letter from Linda, handed off the class into the woman's very capable nicotine-stained hands, and went to the ladies' room in the staff lounge to read the contents. The letter was from her mother-in-law. Aubrey knew exactly what it contained. She tried to pretend her hands weren't shaking. She flipped the lid down on the toilet, locked the door, then sat and ripped open the envelope. Inside was a piece of paper folded into thirds, topped with a handwritten note on a cheery yellow daisy-covered Post-it. Aubrey felt that added just the right touch. Her mother-in-law always had been wildly incapable of any form of tact. There was no denying it now; her hands trembled violently as she unfolded the page. She looked to the handwritten note first. The words were carefully formed, a schoolgirl's roundness to the old-fashioned cursive. Aubrey, For your records. Daisy Hamilton Scribbled in print beneath the painstakingly properly written note were the words: Joshua's Mother Well, no kidding, Daisy. Like I could forget. The sticky note was attached to a printout of an email. It was from Daisy's lawyer, the one who'd helped put this vehicle in motion last year, when Daisy decided to petition the courts to have Josh declared legally dead. Aubrey fingered the scar on her lip as she read. Dear Daisy, Per our earlier conversation, attached please find a copy of the Order entered from the civil court today by Judge Robinson. As I explained to you on the phone, this Order directs the Department of Vital Statistics to issue a death certificate for your son, Joshua David Hamilton, as of April 19 of this year. Now that this Order has been officially entered, we should take another look at the estate plan. Josh's life insurance policy will be fulfilled as soon as the declaration is received, and I'd like you to be fully prepared if you plan to contest the contents. I will be forwarding you a final bill for my services on this matter in the next couple of days. Best personal regards, Rick Saeger And now it was official. In the eyes of the law, Joshua David Hamilton was no longer of this earth. No longer Aubrey's husband. No longer Daisy's son. No longer. Aubrey was suddenly unable to breathe. Even though she'd been expecting it, seeing the words in black-and-white, adorned by Daisy's snippy little missive, killed her. Tears slid down her face, and she crumpled the letter against her thigh. Daisy was a bitch, always had been, and Aubrey got the message loud and clear. Get over it. Get on with your life. And watch out, kid, because I'm coming for that life insurance money. But just how do you move on when you can't bury your husband? Five years later, there were still no good answers to the puzzle of Josh's evaporation. One minute there, the next gone. Poof. Disappeared. Missing. Kidnapped, hit over the head, and suffering from severe amnesia, or--worse than the idea of his heart no longer beating--he'd chosen to leave her. Dead, but not dead. Without a body, how could they know for sure? Damn you, Josh. He was dead. Even Aubrey had to admit that to herself. It had taken a year to formulate that conclusion, a year of the worst possible days imaginable. As much as she hated to believe he was really gone, she knew he was. Because if he wasn't, he would have let her know. He was the other half of her. The better half. The responsible half. The serious half. For him to be taken, or to have run away--no. He would never leave her of his own volition. Which meant he must be dead. The circle that was her life, a snake forever eating its tail. Aubrey didn't know the answers to the riddle. Only knew that one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five days ago, Josh had been nagging at her to hurry up and get in the car because they were late for one of his closest friend's joint bachelor/bachelorette party. That they'd had a serious fender bender on the way to the party, which resulted in the small white scar that intersected Aubrey's top lip in a way that didn't detract from her heart-shaped face. That they'd arrived at the hotel over an hour late, and Aubrey had offered to get them checked in while Josh went to find the groom and join the party. That he'd kissed her deeply before he went, making the cut on her lip throb in time with her heart. That he'd glanced back over his shoulder and given her that devastating half smile that had been melting her insides since she was seven and he was nine and he'd pushed her down on the hard playground asphalt and made her cry. That she'd repeated the words of this story so many times it had become a mantra. To the police. To the lawyers. To the media. To Daisy. To herself. Her world was broken into thirds. Seven and seventeen and five. Seven years before he came into her life. Seventeen in-between years when she'd seen Josh almost every day. Seventeen years of joy and fury and love and sex and marriage and heartache and happiness. Of prepubescent mating rituals, teenage angst, young-adult dawning realization, the inescapable knowledge that they couldn't live without each other, culminating in a small wedding and three years of marital bliss. Five years of After. Five years of wondering. She thought they were happy. Late at night, in the After time, Aubrey would lie in their bed, still on her side, wearing one of his white oxford shirts she pretended held the lingering bits of his scent, and wonder: Weren't we? Weren't we happy? What was happiness? Where did it come from? How did you measure it? She'd always looked at the little things he did--from a sweet note in whatever book she was reading, to bringing her freshly cut apples when she was vacuuming, or having a travel mug of hot Earl Grey tea waiting for her in the morning as she rushed out the door--as signs that he loved her. That he was happy, too. But then he was gone, and she had to pick up the pieces of their once life, shattered like the reflective glass of a broken mirror on the floor. Seven, and seventeen, and then five. Five years of emptiness, solitude, loneliness. The State of Tennessee didn't care about any of that. All the state cared about were the cold hard facts: one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five days ago, Joshua David Hamilton disappeared from the face of the earth, and now enough time had passed that a stranger had declared him legally dead. Excerpted from No One Knows by J. T. Ellison All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
