Confessions on the 7:45
by Lisa Unger
While Selena, her family’s breadwinner as a literary agent, waits for the next train home from her office in the city, she checks the nannycam feed on her phone. There she sees her work-at-home husband having sex with their nanny, Geneva.
She’s not entirely surprised: she’s already caught them once. The problem is—though she loves her husband, she really doesn’t want to lose the nanny.
On the train, she sits next to a woman she doesn’t know. Selena finds herself telling the stranger about her husband’s cheating. The stranger, who introduces herself as Martha, reveals a secret of her own.
Then Geneva disappears. And Selena keeps getting messages from Martha.
Meanwhile we meet Anne, an accountant who is having an affair with her boss’ husband.
And we meet Pearl, a bright but lonely teenager, neglected by her impractical and distracted addict mother. A young man arrives in their lives, helping out in the mother’s bookstore and providing Pearl with the guidance and encouragement she’s been missing.
These story lines intersect in surprising ways as Jewell peels back the layers of each character’s psyche and their backstory. A series of twists will overturn your expectations, revealing that good people can do bad things, and vice-versa. This is a gripping thriller, with suspense building to the final climax, and ends with a satisfying conclusion.
Lisa Unger is an internationally bestselling author known for her character-driven psychological thrillers. Her books have been translated into twenty-six languages and have sold over 2 million copies worldwide.
Lisa was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1970. As a child she lived in the Netherlands, England and New Jersey due to the nomadic nature of her father’s job with Exxon. She majored in writing and literature at the New School for Social Research in New York. She then spent a decade working as a book publicist in New York, meanwhile fitting in writing "in the nooks and crannies of life." During that time she started fleshing out the character who became Lydia Strong in her first novel, but she didn’t get serious about writing until she turned 29. Three years later, in 2002, Angel Fire was published under her maiden name, Lydia Miscione, followed by three more Lydia Strong novels.
She switched to writing under her married name of Lisa Unger in 2006 when she moved to a new publisher, Random House, with Beautiful Lies. Since then she’s written thirteen more novels; Confessions on the 7:45, published in 2020, is the most recent.
Her characters are often hiding terrible secrets, trying to overcome trauma, or running from a dark past. Her next book, Last Girl Ghosted, is due to be published in October 2021. She says it’s another psychological suspense story in which—as in many of her books—characters hide behind their façades.
Lisa lives in Clearwater, Florida with her husband Jeff, her daughter Ocean , and their labradoodle Jak Jak.
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