The Last Time I Lied: A Novel

Two Truths and a Lie. Vivian, Natalie, Allison, and Emma played it always in their cabin at Camp Nightingale. But the games ended the night Emma sleepily watched the others sneak out into the darkness. The last she—or anyone—saw of the teenagers was Vivian closing the cabin door at the back of her, hushing Emma with a finger pressed to her lips….

Fifteen years later, Emma is a rising star in the New York art scene, turning her past into paintings—massive canvases filled with dark leaves and gnarled branches over ghostly shapes in white dresses. When the paintings be a focus for the wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale, she implores Emma to come back to the newly reopened camp as a painting instructor.

Despite her guilt and anxiety—or maybe as a result of them—Emma consents to revisit her past. Nightingale looks the same as it did all those years ago, haunted by a nighttime-dark lake and familiar faces. Emma is even assigned to the same cabin she slept in as a teenager, even supposing the security camera pointed at her door is a disturbing new addition.

As cryptic clues about the camp’s origins begin to surface, Emma attempts to find out what in point of fact happened to her friends. But her closure could come at a deadly price.