A Dangerous Woman A Novel

The “compelling, suspenseful” novel of a vulnerable misfit in a small town by the New York Times–bestselling author of Light from a Distant Star (Publishers Weekly).
 
Named one of the five best novels of the year by Time magazine, A Dangerous Woman is the story of the damaged and emotionally unstable Martha Horgan, an outcast in her small Vermont town. She stares; she has violent crushes on people; and, perhaps most unsettling of all, she cannot stop telling the truth. After a traumatic experience during her teenage years, the thirty-two-year-old now craves love and companionship, but her relentless honesty makes her painfully vulnerable to those around her: Frances, her wealthy aunt and begrudging guardian; Birdy Dusser, who befriends her and then cruelly rejects her; and Colin Mackey, the seductive man who preys on her desires.
 
Confused and bitter, distrusting even those with her best interests at heart, Martha is slowly propelled into a desperate attempt to gain control over her own life. The National Book Award–nominated author of Songs in Ordinary Time tells a tale of unnerving suspense and terrifying psychological insight that is “at once thrilling and deeply affecting” (The New York Times).

 

Mary McGarry Morris grew up in Vermont and now lives on the North Shore in Massachusetts. Her first novel, Vanished, was published in 1988 and was nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. A Dangerous Woman (1991) was chosen by Time magazine as one of the “Five Best Novels of the Year” and was made into a motion picture starring Debra Winger, Barbara Hershey, and Gabriel Byrne. Songs in Ordinary Time (1995) was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, which propelled it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for many weeks, and it was adapted for a TV movie starring Sissy Spacek and Beau Bridges. Morris’s other highly acclaimed works include the novels Fiona Range (2000), A Hole in the Universe (2004), The Lost Mother (2005), The Last Secret (2009), and Light from a Distant Star (2011), as well as the play MTL: The Insanity File.