It is June 21st, the longest day of the year, and new mother Camilla’s life is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop her infant daughter off at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But, when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.

Then it starts. Breaking news: there’s a hostage situation developing in London. The police arrive, and tell her Luke is involved. But he isn’t a hostage. Her husband—doting father, eternal optimist—is the gunman.

What she does next is crucial. Because only she knows what the note he left behind that morning says...

Gillian McAllister is a master of pulse-pounding thrillers. She proved it to us with her last book, Just Another Missing Person. Still, Famous Last Words has managed to exceed the high bar she set for herself. I’ve never been more addicted to the feeling of anxiety—with each page, McAllister manages to raise the stakes, leaving me hanging on every word.

Once you open this book, be prepared to go from 0 to 100 fast. Shortly after we meet our main character, Cam, a brand new mom returning to her job as a literary agent, we watch in horror as she discovers the sinister reason her husband is not home to see her off. When Cam opens her door to multiple policemen, they inform her that the hostage situation flashing across her television screen is personal: her husband is the gunman responsible. From there, we follow Cam’s story as she is called onto the scene of the crime in the present day, interspersed with peeks into the life that she and her husband used to share and the day that changed it forever.

As someone who doesn’t get hooked easily, it takes something special for me to emphatically endorse a thriller novel. Believe me when I say that Famous Last Words is more than worthy of a place in your box this month.