KEEP THIS FOR ME
by Jennifer Fawcett
(Simon and Schuster, October 2025)
Jennifer Fawcett, the acclaimed author of the “chilliing debut” Beneath the Stairs returns with a gripping, atmospheric suspense novel about a woman investigating a serial killer’s connection to her mother’s disappearance. Fans of I Have Some Questions for You and Notes on an Execution may relish Jennifer’s latest tale.
In this chat with Authorlink’s Doris Booth, Jennifer talks abut maintaining courage and persistence on the bumpy road to publication, and her joy of finding a home for her novels.
After a mysterious prologue, KEEP THIS FOR ME begins on a hot August night in 1993. A young couple’s car breaks down on the way home from a party. They are picked up by a truck driver who attacks the man and abducts the woman. She is never seen again.
That woman was Fiona Green’s mother.
When the trucker, Eddie Ward, is caught, a mass grave of bodies is discovered in his backyard but Fiona’s mother isn’t there. Thirty years later, on his prison deathbed, Ward insists that he didn’t kill her, so Fiona finds herself back in the small town where her mother disappeared. Fighting demons of her own, she’s shocked when history repeats itself: another woman, another roadside breakdown, and another disappearance. Only this time the primary suspect is Jason Ward, Eddie’s son. Desperate, Fiona hunts down answers, unaware that she is being drawn into a dangerous trap.
With Jennifer Fawcett’s signature “suspenseful and immersive” (Library Journal) prose, Keep This for Me is a fresh, spellbinding exploration of what we unwillingly inherit from our parents and how one random act can send ripples years into the future.
About the author:
Before writing books, Jennifer Fawcett was an award-winning playwright and cofounder of the theater company Working Group. She is the author of Beneath the Stairs and Keep This for Me. Born and raised in Canada, she spent a decade living in the Midwest before settling in the Hudson Valley. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her work has been published in Third Coast Magazine, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Storybrink, and in the anthology Long Story Short. She teaches writing at Skidmore College and lives in upstate New York with her husband and son. Visit her at JenniferFawcettAuthor.com.
Select Praise for Jennifer Fawcett’s debut Beneath the Stairs
“[Beneath the Stairs] reminds readers how easily a thought becomes a truth, how quickly a dream becomes a nightmare, and how unknowingly we ourselves can become haunted houses. . . . Fawcett’s debut is both incredibly suspenseful and immersive. A word of caution to readers: leave the light on.” – Library Journal
“An enthralling debut by a gifted storyteller!” – Wendy Walker, author of Don’t Look for Me and All Is Not Forgotten
“[S]pell-binding … A thoroughly engrossing and compulsive read.” – Elizabeth Brundage, author of The Vanishing Point
“Jennifer Fawcett’s Beneath the Stairs had me from the very first page. Tense, surprising, and utterly gripping, I loved this book!” – Karen Dionne, author of international bestsellers The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister
” I devoured [this novel] in one sitting. Atmospheric, cleverly constructed—the past meets the present in this gripping debut.” – Karen Brown, author of The Clairvoyants and The Longings of Wayward Girls
