The Only One Left: A Novel

Riley Sager

Jun 2023 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Named a summer book to watch by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, Oprah, Paste, Country Living, Good Housekeeping, and Nerd Daily

"Propulsive ... a dizzying Gothic whodunit."
—New York Times Book Review

Bestselling author Riley Sager returns with a Gothic chiller about a young caregiver assigned to work for a woman accused of a Lizzie Borden-like massacre decades earlier.

At seventeen, Lenora Hope
Hung her sister with a rope

Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred.

Stabbed her father with a knife
Took her mother’s happy life

It’s now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything.

“It wasn’t me,” Lenora said
But she’s the only one not dead
 
As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there’s more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor’s departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

Ratings and reviews

Got me hooked from the sample reading and had me hooked for a while. The ending was weird. It was confusing and too many characters kept popping in and out. It was very busy and sloppy, not at all how the book was progressing thus far. Not the worst read in the world, just ended oddly.

it's currently 3am and I finished this book. This book will have you on the edge of your seat, the last 1/3 of the book made my eyes move faster than I could read at times in need of learning more

Completely unputdownable! The twists and turns just keep coming until the last word.

About the author

Riley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, most recently The Only One Left and The House Across the Lake. A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.