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  • Fragile

  • A Novel
  • Written by: Lisa Unger
  • Narrated by: Nancy Linari
  • Length: 11 hrs and 34 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (2 ratings)

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Fragile

Written by: Lisa Unger
Narrated by: Nancy Linari
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Publisher's Summary

A thrilling novel from New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger about the hunt for a missing girl and one community’s intricate yet fragile bonds.

“[A] nail-biting nuanced whodunit.”—People

Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows’s insular embrace. As a psychologist, her knowledge of family histories provides powerful insights into her patients’ lives. So when the girlfriend of her teenage son, Rick, disappears, Maggie’s intuitive gift proves useful to the case—and also dangerous.

Eerie parallels soon emerge between Charlene’s disappearance and the abduction of another local girl that shook the community years ago when Maggie was a teenager. The investigation has her husband, Jones, the lead detective on the case, acting strangely. Rick, already a brooding teenager, becomes even more withdrawn. In a town where the past is always present, nobody is above suspicion, not even a son in the eyes of his father.

As she tries to reassure him that Rick embodies his father in all of the important ways, Maggie realizes this might be exactly what Jones fears most. Determined to uncover the truth, Maggie pursues her own leads into Charlene’s disappearance and exposes a long-buried town secret—one that could destroy everything she holds dear.

©2010 Lisa Unger (P)2010 Random House

What the critics say

“Folks in a small town descend into darkness and revisit long forgotten memories when a young girl disappears. . . . [A] simmering, tragic tale. Fans of authors like Jodi Picoult will want to read this one in a nice comfortable chair. . . . Unger's fans won't be disappointed.” (Associated Press)

“This one is a stunner. . . . Unger’s genius is in plotting the story so that the reader never knows what’s coming next. . . .This is a read that will stay with you.” (New York Journal of Books Review)

“If you're a fan of Jodi Picoult's family chronicle storytelling, you'll enjoy Fragile, too. It's set in a small affluent town outside New York, where everyone knows someone who kissed the pizza guy once and many have ugly memories and buried secrets. When a teenage girl goes missing, the lives of all who knew her unravel. Unger balances nicely the suspense of her missing person story (a layered one when the vanishing of another teenage girl 30 years earlier is connected) with deeper sentiments. How do you live in the present when the past has broken you?” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

What listeners say about Fragile

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