Illustration by Hayden Williams

Cover of Good Neighbors, A Novel by Sarah Langan

Buy Good Neighbors:

Amazon
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Bookshop
Books-a-Million
Indie Bound

Best of the Year:
Newsweek, The Irish Times, the AARP

Notable Book:
iTunes, Audible, LitHub, People Magazine, The Week

Synopsis:

Welcome to Maple Street, a picture-perfect slice of suburban Long Island, its residents bound by their children, their work, and their illusion of safety in a rapidly changing world.

Arlo Wilde, a gruff has-been rock star who’s got nothing to show for his fame but track marks, is always two steps behind the other dads. His wife, beautiful ex-pageant queen Gertie, feels socially ostracized and adrift. Spunky preteen Julie curses like a sailor and her kid brother Larry is called “Robot Boy” by the kids on the block.

Their next-door neighbor and Maple Street’s Queen Bee, Rhea Schroeder—a lonely community college professor repressing a dark past—welcomes Gertie and family into the fold. Then, during one spritzer-fueled summer evening, the new best friends share too much, too soon.

As tensions mount, a sinkhole opens in a nearby park, and Rhea’s daughter Shelly falls inside. The search for Shelly brings a shocking accusation against the Wildes that spins out of control. Suddenly, it is one mom’s word against the other’s in a court of public opinion that can end only in blood.

A riveting and ruthless portrayal of American suburbia, Good Neighbors excavates the perils and betrayals of motherhood and friendships and the dangerous clash between social hierarchy, childhood trauma, and fear.

Praise for Good Neighbors:

“The monsters aren’t just coming to Maple Street, they’re already here.”

—Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians

“IT. IS. CHILLING. It’s so intense and chilling. It’s like if Shirley Jackson wrote BIG LITTLE LIES…This is one of the best books that I have read.”

—Bookriot

“A modern-day Crucible, Good Neighbors brilliantly explores the ease with which a careless word can wreak havoc and the terrifying power of mob mentality. Beneath the surface of a suburban utopia, madness lurks. The veneer of civility among close neighbors disguises hypocrisy, envy, and hatred. Langan deftly unveils the psychology behind her character’s actions with blistering prose and spot-on depictions. She is a writer to watch!”

—Liv Constantine, bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish

“Good Neighbors is a riveting critique of American suburbia. Langan deftly confronts social mores and beliefs as she tears all the ugliness down to make something dangerous and beautiful. The monsters of Maple Street have never been so us.”

—Paul Tremblay, author of Survivor Song

“Good Neighbors is a wickedly funny, unnerving puzzle box of a novel. Sarah Langan has a delightfully twisted sensibility.”

—Dan Chaon, author of Ill Will

“In Sarah Langan’s amazing, riveting Good Neighbors, we sift through the wreckage of a neighborhood, trying to make sense of the violence and hidden darkness of a small community in the aftermath of disaster. Langan is an inventive, confident writer, with such a sharp sense of humor, and she so deftly handles the complex ways in which we find ourselves inextricably linked to each other, how little it takes to push us over the edge. A chilling, compulsively readable novel that looks toward the future in order to help us understand how we live now.”

—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Nothing to See Here

“Sarah Langan is a phenomenal talent with a wicked sense of wry humor. Good Neighbors knocked me out. Like Shirley Jackson’s novels, Langan’s work blends a bleak streak with an underlying sense of the humane that wrung my heart.”

—Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

“A blistering satire of suburban life with serious emotional stakes. A fantastic literary thriller.”

—Sarah Pinborough, author of Behind her Eye

“Grab whatever bookmark is your Book of the Year bookmark, wash your hands with Book of the Year soap, put on your Book of the Year pants, sit in your Book of the Year chair and open @SarahVLangan1’s GOOD NEIGHBORS. It’s extraordinary”

—Josh Malerman, author of Birdbox

“…transcendent. Astonishingly insightful, heartbreaking, and profoundly wise. It’s hard to imagine I’ll find a more impressive novel this year. Holy crap, what a book!

—Chris Golden, author of Red Hands

“Some novels are puzzle boxes, devices of impossible intricacy meant to delight the intellect. Some take a different form — a raw, beating heart, oozing pathos and humanity. Sarah Langan’s Good Neighbors (Simon & Schuster) is both things, and more. It wrecked me, left me in tears twice, and if the past three days are any indication, Good Neighbors will live rent-free in my mind for a long time to come.”

—The Memphis Flyer

“Good Neighbors was such a fun read—fun in a brilliant, twisted, dark, compulsive-reading kind of way! I loved the structure of it, with the little hints Langan threw my way about the Maple Street Murders—I just had to keep reading, because I had to know what happened. She is so good at showing how the idle gossip of suburbia can turn darker, malevolent, and downright dangerous. Wonderful stuff!”

—Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange

“You have to read Good Neighbors. Through Langan’s gift for mood and setting, I was absolutely transported to Maple Street—I feel like I lived in this book, walked in it, dreamed in it. The characters were strikingly real and I was utterly invested in their individual journeys. All of it—the characters, the setting, the sinkhole, the heat—made this book the masterpiece that it is. Real and sad and almost painfully moving, Good Neighbors is a novel I will never forget.”

—Sally Hepworth, bestselling author of The Mother-in-Law

“In the wonderfully inventive Good Neighbors, Sarah Langan takes her readers on a wild ride through suburbia. As sinkholes open and rumours rise, I couldn’t stop turning the pages to find out what new terrible event would befall these fascinating characters, each with a secret sorrow. A gripping read.”

—Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The Boy in the Field

“A brilliant story. I was completely absorbed by the world Sarah Langan created. The interspersing of the media excerpts was inspired and my interest was piqued and then my assumptions were blown away by the end. I even felt a little sorry for the monster that is Rhea. Clever, arresting and thought-provoking, Good Neighbors gripped hold of me like the best kind of thriller.”

—Melanie Golding, author of Little Darlings

“A masterpiece… I cried twice.”

Jesse Davis, The Memphis Flyer

“A taut, teachable moment about neighbors turning on neighbors.”

–People Magazine

“A false narrative reaches a fever pitch in this unsettling story set in the quasi-dystopian future of a Long Island suburb.”

Newsweek

A Goodreads Most Anticipated Thriller of 2021

“One of the creepiest, most unnerving deconstructions of American suburbia I’ve ever read.”

Gabino Iglesias, NPR