Venom Lake

For fans of Lucy Foley and Lisa Jewell, this is a smart, biting, set-in-Canada debut thriller about a toxic upscale true crime book club

On a retreat for their true-crime book club, four women are the only people on Snakebite Island. But what was supposed to be a fun weekend of getting trashed on rosé and talking serial killers takes a dark turn when one of the women is found dead on the shore. Murdered. By one of their supposed friends.

Under the surface, there's been turbulence in the group. Blackmail, affairs, and addiction. Financial misconduct. A missing husband. Everyone has a motive. And they are all hiding dangerous secrets, but how far are they willing to go to keep them?

The murder creates a dilemma for the three surviving book club members: report the death and have their own lives shredded by an investigation or use their true-crime knowledge to stage their friend’s disappearance on the lake as an accident? Under duress and against their better judgment, they all agree to conceal the crime.

The remaining three women know one of them did it. Could someone else be next? As one of the women comes to regret her decision the effects of the cover-up ripple outwards, creating new risks and threatening to unravel their net of lies.