Middle of the Night: A Novel

In the latest jawdropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the longago disappearance of his childhood best friendand the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his pictureperfect neighborhood.The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marshs backyard. One July night, tenyearold Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billys presence keep appearing in Ethans backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed ghosts roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no placebe it quiet forest or suburban streetis completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.