

He spends his time either managing Lauren’s angry outbursts or worrying about the things he’s buried in the nearby woods. Regardless of what he has or hasn’t done, Ted does not have an easy life.

To avoid giving away any of its secrets, only a few things can be safely revealed: it’s a story about Ted, who lives in a ramshackle house on a dead-end street and might be a serial killer Lauren, the young girl Ted is raising Olivia, who loves the Bible, never leaves the house, and happens to be Ted’s cat and Dee, a woman who thinks Ted has done something terrible to her younger sister, who vanished years ago during a family visit to a lake near Ted’s house. It doesn’t hit US bookstores until September 28, but Catriona Ward’s THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET is already famously difficult to talk about.

‘The Darker the Tale, the Purer the Heart’
