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  • All the Beautiful Lies

All the Beautiful Lies

by Peter Swanson
All the Beautiful Lies by Peter Swanson
Unrated

Harry Ackerson has always considered his stepmother Alice to be sexy and beautiful, in an "otherworldly" way. She has always been kind and attentive, if a little aloof in the last few years.

Days before his college graduation, Alice calls with shocking news. His father is dead and the police think it’s suicide. Devastated, Harry returns to his father’s home in Maine. There, he and Alice will help each other pick up of the pieces of their lives and uncover what happened to his father.

Shortly after he arrives, Harry meets a mysterious young woman named Grace McGowan. Though she claims to be new to the area, Harry begins to suspect that Grace may not be a complete stranger to his family. But she isn’t the only attractive woman taking an interest in Harry. The sensual Alice is also growing closer, coming on to him in an enticing, clearly sexual way.

Mesmerized by these two women, Harry finds himself falling deeper under their spell. Yet the closer he gets to them, the more isolated he feels, disoriented by a growing fear that both women are hiding dangerous—even deadly—secrets . . . and that neither one is telling the truth.

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ThrillerMysteryCrime FictionPsychological ThrillerSuspense Thriller
Release date: April 3, 2018

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Peter Swanson

Peter Swanson

It’s not every day a crime writer dares to peel back the tidy edges of the mystery genre, but Peter Swanson has made a career of doing just that—inviting readers into stories where the comfort of predictability is always just one twist away from unraveling. Known for psychological thrillers that relish in the sinister potential of the everyday, Swanson doesn't just craft plots—he toys with expectation, layering deceit, obsession, and dread into tales that feel disarmingly plausible.

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Before he was unsettling readers with novels like The Kind Worth Killing and Eight Perfect Murders, Swanson was a Massachusetts native who found his footing in poetry and short fiction. That early affinity for rhythm and brevity still lingers in his prose—tight, spare, and loaded with tension. His stories are often set in deceptively quiet New England settings, where suburban normalcy cracks to reveal something far darker underneath.

What sets Swanson apart in the crowded world of psychological suspense isn’t just his knack for plot twists—though readers know better than to trust anything at face value in his books. It’s his fascination with the psychology of murder, and the slippery moral territory that lies between justice and revenge. In The Kind Worth Killing, he invites readers into the minds of would-be killers and dares them to empathize. In Before She Knew Him, he examines obsession and complicity through an unsettlingly intimate lens.

A lifelong admirer of Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith, Swanson brings a cinematic elegance to his storytelling. His thrillers are taut without being breathless, clever without showboating, and always driven by deeply flawed, often unreliable characters. That might be why his work has found fans around the globe—and why Eight Perfect Murders was chosen as a New York Times bestseller and earned widespread critical praise for its metafictional take on classic crime fiction.

Swanson’s writing journey is marked not by a desire to outsmart the reader, but by an interest in how we read stories, how we trust narrators, and how easily truth can be buried beneath well-constructed lies. It’s that subversion—not just of the whodunit, but of why we care in the first place—that keeps readers hooked, and perhaps, a little uneasy long after they’ve turned the final page.

More books by Peter Swanson

Henry Kimball Book 4 (Henry Kimball #4)
⧗ 9.00 / 4
Kill Your Darlings
Unrated
A Talent for Murder (Henry Kimball #3)
⧗ 8.00 / 1
The Christmas Guest
Unrated
The Kind Worth Saving (Henry Kimball #2)
Unrated
Nine Lives
Unrated
Every Vow You Break
Unrated
Eight Perfect Murders
Unrated
Before She Knew Him
Unrated
Her Every Fear
Unrated
The Kind Worth Killing (Henry Kimball #1)
Unrated
The Girl with a Clock for a Heart
Unrated


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