THE RIBS
In early 2018, Drew Torrens, a family attorney with almost no criminal experience, returns to her stifling hometown to defend her estranged best friend’s husband, who is accused of starving a man to death. Drew wants to win the case and leave before anyone notices she is there. But the official story won’t hold still. Between the police’s evidence, the Reddit threads, and the diary her friend started the month the victim went. missing, the truth keeps rearranging itself.
As Drew investigates, the case drags her back into everything she desperately wants to run away from: the case that broke her, her debilitating relationship with food, and the violent incident that fractured her friendship and kept her away in the first place. The deeper she looks, the more the women around her stop looking like leads and start looking like mirrors.
And once Drew understands who the killer is, she realizes she may understand them too well. The only question left is what she’s willing to do, and whether exposing the truth will change anything.
THE RIBS is an 80,000-word upmarket suspense that uses starvation as a lens on what women are made to go without. It echoes the insatiable hunger of Chelsea G. Summer’s A Certain Hunger, and it will appeal to fans of Ashley Audrain and Megan Abbot.