Reserve your copy now! Expected release is April 7, 2026. Will ship on or after April 7, 2026. Limited copies available. 

'Secrets don't stay secret for long in publishing'

Six authors.

One private island.

Seventy-two hours to write the ending that will change their lives.

‘This is a house of novelists, not murderers. You dream up crimes. You don’t commit them.’

‘But a writer has. And so, who better than a writer to catch them?’

World famous author Arthur Fletch is dead. His final novel, the most anticipated book in history, remains unfinished. But the ending won’t write itself.

Fletch’s publisher, Merriweather Press, has invited six authors to Fletch’s private island in Scotland. Authors whose books have never had the big marketing budgets or publicity opportunities. In other words, midlist. And they’re about to be presented with the opportunity of a lifetime.

Whoever writes a worthy ending will receive one million dollars, and a further one million dollars for a new three-book contract.

They have just seventy-two hours, with no access to the outside world, just a typewriter and a blank page. All they have to do is write…

Starting is often the hardest part. But getting to the end could be murder.

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It was a dark and stormy night (well, it was actually an unusually warm evening in Edinburgh, Scotland) when New York Times bestselling author V.E. Schwab proposed an absurd idea to longtime friend and screenwriter Cat Clarke: that they should write a book together. V had made quite a name for herself, with more than 20 books, including the Shades of Magic series, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, but had sworn she'd never co-write a novel, let alone one without fantasy. While Cat, following a tumultuous career as an editor and the author of several YA novels, including Girlhood and Entangled, had fled the publishing industry to work in the even more tumultuous film industry, swearing she'd never return to books. And yet, fate—and an irresistible idea—made liars of them both. That night, as they switched from tea to something stronger, Evelyn Clarke was born.