Hostage: A Novel

Clare Mackintosh

Jun 2021 · Sourcebooks, Inc.

About this ebook

"Feels like a blockbuster movie."—Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone

"Mackintosh is a pro...the final scene in the book almost made me sick as I read it. I mean that as a compliment of the highest order."—The New York Times

You can save hundreds of lives. Or the one that matters most...

From New York Times bestselling author Clare Mackintosh comes a claustrophobic thriller set over 20 hours on-board the inaugural nonstop flight from London to Sydney.

Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems with her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination: "The following instructions will save your daughter's life..."

Someone needs Mina's assistance and knows exactly how to make her comply.

When one passenger is killed and then another, Mina knows she must act. But which lives does she save: Her passengers...or her own daughter and husband who are in grave distress back at home?

It's twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours.

For fans of the locked-room mystery of One by One and the heart-stopping tension The Last Flight, Hostage is an explosively addictive thriller about one flight attendant and the agonizing decision that will change her life—and the lives of everyone on-board—forever.

Praise for Hostage:

"A banger of a book with a truly agonizing 'what would you do?'"

—Ruth Ware, #1 New York Times bestselling author of One by One

"Hypnotically good. Should be a hit, could be a classic..."

—Lee Child, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series

"Fiendishly clever."

—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before She Disappeared

"A propulsive read."

—Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Wife

"A nail-biter of a thriller."

—Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

Ratings and reviews

Thrilling moments but a lot of plot holes. Sure it is fiction but lots of unbelievable actions even with blinders on to try and enjoy the story. My favorite part was simply around the first non-stop flight from London to Australia. Not about the action involved with this hostage situation. Worth a read if you have nothing left on your to be read shelf but would recommend loaning from your local library as you will not re-read this story.

Wow! This book took a really long time to, um, take off. More than 100 pages of nothing and then it really starts. It was an okay read. Not completely predictable.

About the author

With over 2 million copies of her books sold worldwide, number one bestseller Clare Mackintosh is the multi-award-winning author of I Let You Go, which was a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller and the fastest-selling title by a new crime writer in 2015. It also won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2016. Both Clare's second and third novels, I See You and Let Me Lie, were number one Sunday Times bestsellers. Her first three thrillers were selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club, and together have been translated into forty languages. After the End was published in 2019 and became an instant Sunday Times bestseller, and in 2021 Hostage flew straight into the top ten. Her new crime series, featuring Welsh detective DC Ffion Morgan, has been critically acclaimed, with both The Last Party and A Game of Lies hitting the Sunday Times top ten. Together, her books have spent more than sixty-five weeks in The Sunday Times bestseller lists. Clare is patron of the Silver Star Society, a charity based at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, which supports parents experiencing high-risk or difficult pregnancies. She lives in North Wales with her husband and their three children.