Family Life, Domestic Life, Contemporary Women, United States, Literary, Psychological Thrillers 

At once a captivating mystery, a love letter to classic literature, and a sharp-eyed examination of marriage, The Book of Secrets is a gripping novel of family, friendship, and the undeniable pull of the past.  After more than twenty years of marriage, Chloe Sinclair comes home one night to find that her husband, Nate, is gone. All he has left behind is a cryptic note explaining that he's returned to their childhood town, a place Chloe never wants to see again.   While trying to reach Nate, Chloe stumbles upon a notebook tucked inside his antique copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Written in code, the pages contain long-buried secrets from their past, and clues to why he went home after all these years. As Chloe struggles to decipher the notebook's hidden messages using novels from their childhood, she revisits the seminal moments of their youth: her days with the enigmatic Sinclair children, all largely sequestered from the rest of the world, the increasingly dangerous games they played to escape their troubled childhoods, and the elaborate plan she and Nate devised, inspired by Romeo and Juliet, to break away from his puritanical father. As the reason for Nate's absence comes to light, the truth will forever shatter everything Chloe knows--about her husband, his family, and herself. Filled with an underlying adoration for the written word, love for the very feel and scent of a book in the hand, and references from novels as diverse as Crime and Punishment and Where the Wild Things Are, The Book of Secrets is a novel for anyone who has ever stayed up late to finish just one more chapter. Praise for The Book of Secrets  "An exquisite novel . . . As the story wends on, secrets collapse onto each other...The biggest secret is revealed at the end and won't be spoiled here because The Book of Secrets is one of those reasons some of us live to read."--The Star-Ledger   "Tender and transcendent, The Book of Secrets is about the truths we hide, the consequences we face, and the particular comfort we can only find in a good book. Elizabeth Joy Arnold has written a beautiful and haunting ode to the power of words, and how they shape our lives."--Sarah Addison Allen, New York Times bestselling author of The Peach Keeper   "The Book of Secrets plunges the reader into the strange and intense world of the Sinclairs, a family bound and pulled apart by the forces of imagination and religious belief. Through the eyes of Chloe Tyler, trapped in this world since childhood, Arnold paints a fascinating picture of obsession and loss. The Book of Secrets offers a complex meditation on the elusive nature of truth and on the power of secrets."--Henriette Lazaridis Power, author of The Clover House   "This is the beautiful and heart-wrenching story about the secrets that can both hold a marriage together, and drive two people apart. Reading The Book of Secrets is like walking through a dark labyrinth: just when all hope is lost, you step out into sunshine."--Carla Buckley, author of Invisible  Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader's Circle for author chats and more. - from Amzon