Before She Was Helen: A Novel

Caroline B. Cooney

Sep 2020 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Kimberly Farr

About this audiobook

Her life didn't turn out the way she expected―so she made herself a new one

When Clemmie goes next door to check on her difficult and unlikeable neighbor Dom, he isn't there. But something else is. Something stunning, beautiful and inexplicable. Clemmie photographs the wondrous object on her cell phone and makes the irrevocable error of forwarding it. As the picture swirls over the internet, Clemmie tries desperately to keep a grip on her own personal network of secrets. Can fifty years of careful hiding under names not her own be ruined by one careless picture?

And although what Clemmie finds is a work of art, what the police find is a body. . . in a place where Clemmie wasn't supposed to be, and where she left her fingerprints. Suddenly, the bland, quiet life Clemmie has built for herself in her sleepy South Carolina retirement community comes crashing down as her dark past surges into the present.

From international bestselling author of The Face on the Milk Carton Caroline B. Cooney comes Before She Was Helen, an absorbing mystery that brings decades-old secrets to life and explores what happens when the lie you've been living falls apart and you're forced to confront the truth.

About the author

An incredibly prolific author of young adult novels, Caroline B. Cooney is perhaps best known for The Face on the Milk Carton quartet, which tells the story of Janie Johnson, and what happens when she discovers she was kidnapped as a child. She is also the author of the Losing Christina series, the Time Traveler Quartet, as well as dozens of other stand-alone books for young adults.