Little Disasters: A Novel

Product Description

“Taut, clever, compelling, and guaranteed to keep you on the edge of your seat.” —Paula Hawkins, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water

From the bestselling author of Anatomy of a Scandal—soon to be a Netflix series—a new thought-provoking novel exploring the complexity of motherhood and all that connects and disconnects us.

You think you know her…b
ut look a little closer.

She is a stay-at-home mother-of-three with boundless reserves of patience, energy, and love. After being friends for a decade, this is how Liz sees Jess.

Then one moment changes everything.

Dark thoughts and carefully guarded secrets surface—and Liz is left questioning everything she thought she knew about her friend, and about herself. The truth can’t come soon enough.

With Sarah Vaughan’s signature “clever and compelling” (Claire Douglas, author of
Last Seen Alive) prose,
Little Disasters is a tightly-wound and evocative page-turner that will haunt you long after you finish the last page.

Review

“Compelling, beautifully written, so perceptive and emotionally devastating. Like 
Anatomy of a Scandal, it feels like an important book as well as a brilliant read.” — Lucy Foley, New York Times bestselling author of THE GUEST LIST

“Each character is brilliantly drawn, and the book delivers surprise after surprise.” — Claire Fuller, author of BITTER ORANGE

“A true psychological thriller shows us, as all the best ones do, that the scariest place is not the dark alleyway but inside the pathways of our own minds.” — Araminta Hall, author of OUR KIND OF CRUELTY

“Will have parents – in fact, all readers – turning the pages deep into the night.” — Louise Candlish, author of THOSE PEOPLE

“A brilliant storyteller, Vaughan serves up every mother’s nightmare with consummate skill and a big heart… Impossible to put down.” — Eve Chase, author of BLACK RABBIT HALL

“Absolutely brilliant; an emotionally devastating story, brave and honest.” — Emma Curtis, author of ONE LITTLE MISTAKE

“I loved it and didn’t want to put it down.” — Laura Marshall, author of FRIEND REQUEST

“An immaculately researched and compelling story about the devastating fallout from one mistake.” — Jane Shemilt, author of THE PLAYGROUND

“Gripping, meticulous, and touches the raw nerves of parenthood.” — Terry Stiastny, author of CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

“A fabulous twisty look at early motherhood and friendships
… brave and brilliant.” — Fionnuala Kearney, author of THE BOOK OF LOVE

About the Author

Sarah Vaughan studied English at Oxford and went on to become a journalist. She spent eleven years at
The
Guardian as a news reporter, health correspondent, and political correspondent. Sarah lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One: Liz

ONE LIZ
FRIDAY, 19 JANUARY, 2018

It is definitely the short straw of hospital medicine. ER in a trauma center on a Friday night in late January; eleven thirty and the waiting areas are rammed. Patients glazed with boredom slump on every available chair, a queue is waiting to be triaged, and we’re nearing the mayhem that descends when the drunks and the lads whose fights have turned a bit nasty roll in: lairy, disruptive, laughing in the face of reason. If the abuse turns physical—walls punched, a nurse shoved, a Sri Lankan doctor spat at—security will have to be called.

A cold January means that the hospital is already busy: filled to 99 percent capacity. ER on the brink of turning away ambulances: almost on red alert. Many patients don’t need to be here: not least those who couldn’t get—or didn’t
think to get—a doctor’s appointment and who now realize that a long and uncomfortable weekend stretches ahead of them unless they hotfoot it to the ER in the belief that doing so will make their virus swiftly better. They’re the ones who are the most vocal about the long wait, who hover by the nurses’