The Only One Left

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.

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 Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly — nor has she ever set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliff-side mansion where the massacre occurred.

It’s 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 night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora is mute after a series of strokes and can only communicate via tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night Lenora makes 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 far more to the tale than anyone knows. But when new details about her predecessor’s disappearance come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora may not be telling the full truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than first thought.

“Page after page, Sager feeds our voyeuristic hunger to know every deep, dark, bloody detail in those rare cases that capture our attention and our imagination.” — Megan Abbot

“A master storyteller … The Only One Left is a terrifying treat for all of his fans.” — Chandler Baker

“The tension throughout this book is so intense it is breath-taking. I literally couldn’t leave this story alone.” — Reader review compiled on Fantastic Fiction