The Safe Room

A pre–Civil War era murder haunts a present-day family in this atmospheric suspense novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Art Forger.

How long can murder haunt a family? Until the wrong is put right and the victim is able to rest in peace. Set in Lexington, Massachusetts, The Safe Room is a story of such a murder and such a haunting. A psychological thriller, the tale toggles between the eve of the Civil War and present day. It follows the doomed love affair of Silas Person, a runaway slave riding the Underground Railroad, and Sarah Harden, the daughter of a famous abolitionist. Sarah and Silas’s story is intertwined with that of Lee Seymour, a modern-day descendant of the Harden family who must suddenly grapple with a world in which murder and ghosts are all too real.

The Safe Room is a suspenseful tale that employs love and the paranormal to explore the ugliness of injustice and the beauty of human hope.

B. A. Shapiro is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Art Forger, five additional novels, four screenplays, and a nonfiction book. She is the recipient of the 2013 New England Book Award for Fiction, a 2013 Massachusetts Must-Read Book award, and a 2012 Boston Globe Best Crime Book award. Shapiro was also nominated for a 2013 Massachusetts Book Award. She lives in Boston and is working on her next novel.