Lisa Gardner’s first standalone in years is an instant bestseller. In conversation with Paul Salfen, the New Hampshire novelist explains why a young couple would buy a crime scene — and why the truth might make you sorry you asked.
Interview by Paul Salfen · Text by Christine Thompson · AMFM Magazine · August 2026
Lisa Gardner has spent three decades teaching readers how to get away with murder — and how not to. A #1 New York Times bestselling author with more than 30 million copies in print in over 30 languages, she is the architect of the Frankie Elkin missing-persons novels and the Detective D.D. Warren series, a winner of the International Thriller Writers Award, and, as the Associated Press put it, “the master of the psychological thriller.” Her new book, You’ll Be Sorry — a standalone released August 4, 2026 from Grand Central Publishing — needs no series homework. It is already an instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller, a late-summer spine-tingler built on a vanished family of six, a New Hampshire lodge that should have stayed empty, and a newlywed couple who thought a mountain view could outrun a secret.
A small town where nothing bad ever happens
When AMFM’s Paul Salfen caught Gardner mid-tour, she was already apologizing for having to bolt. The book, though, was not going anywhere. “It’s really fun to bring a book out in the world, even after all of these years,” she said. Then she located the nerve of this one. “You’ll Be Sorry is more personal to me, because I live in a small town in New Hampshire, and that’s the inspiration for the book. A small town where nothing bad ever happens — except, you know, for that family of six that disappeared 30 years ago and has never been seen since. But other than that, great place to live.”
On the page, that town is Shereford. The house is the Dixon family lodge, once a crown jewel of the mountains, perched on a ledge with the kind of view that sells a marriage and hides a crime. Late one August night, both parents and their four children vanished, leaving a trail of bloody footprints and a mystery that outlived a generation. Thirty years later, Raquel Collins — a renowned interior designer — and Theo Collins — a brash financial wizard — arrive from Boston to begin again after a tragedy of their own. They met and married in a matter of months. They have not asked each other the hard questions. They have bought a crime scene anyway.
Kirkus called the novel “a satisfyingly layered” interrogation of “the insular lives and histories of small towns.” Ana Reyes, author of The House in the Pines, said she “couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.” Lisa Jewell, who knows a thing about domestic unease, called it “chilling, gripping.” Gardner’s own origin story for the book is drier, and funnier, and more dangerous.
“Let’s buy a crime scene. That will solve our problems.”
Salfen asked for the aha moment — the seed. Gardner does not start with a twist. She starts with a situation. “I saw a young couple that were still in that heady throes of being madly in love. They haven’t asked each other the hard questions, because you don’t care yet, right? Everything’s perfect. Everything is just so good, we don’t care. Except something terrible had happened to them. I didn’t know what, though.”
“Tragedy had happened, and now, all of a sudden, they’re unbearably aware of all the secrets, all the things they don’t know, and they don’t know how to deal with it. So hey, let’s move from Boston to the mountains of New Hampshire and buy a crime scene! That will solve our problems! And then I was off and running.”
A stray dog later leads to a skeleton on the property. The lodge stirs. Not everyone in Shereford is glad a new family has moved into the old house. The past, Gardner suggests, does not stay buried just because the new owners have good taste and a view.
The gift, the day job, and the Hail Mary
Salfen told her she has “the gift.” Gardner, who has three dogs and no patience for the myth of the lone genius, waved the compliment toward the work. “I was always writing. I think I started my first book when I was six. I was very lucky. I wrote my first completed novel at 17. I sold it when I was 20. I have no employable skills. This is it, Paul. I’m really glad people like learning how to get away with murder. It’s made my life so much better.”
The path was not a straight shot from that first sale to the bestseller list. AMFM’s co-host Drew Pearson — the Dallas Cowboys Hall of Famer — has a running question for guests: the Hail Mary. The throw you have to take. Gardner’s was not a plot twist. It was a resignation letter.
“I was a published author for a little bit. I was very lucky to sell young, but I was making almost nothing. So I went off to college, I became a business consultant, I had a real job with benefits. It also involved cubicles and pantyhose and bosses, and it turns out I don’t like that stuff.” She quit, “much to my father’s chagrin.” The math was terrible. The bet was specific. “If I could focus, and if I could write a big book…” The book was The Perfect Husband: a serial killer put away by the people who loved him, broken out of prison, sworn to revenge on everyone who put him there — including his wife. Three years later, it was the breakout. The cubicle did not get a sequel.
Writing is solo. Publishing is a team sport.
Aspiring novelists ask her the same question Salfen did: how do you actually do this? Gardner’s answer is unsentimental. “Two things. You have to really love reading, and you have to love writing.” Then the part people skip. “Writing might be solo. You need to develop a novel on your own, and maybe with the help of three dogs like I have. But publishing is a team sport, and other writers — knowing other authors — is a huge help. I actually got my first agent because I joined my local writing group. It was other authors that helped me find my agent.”
She is still in the huddle. Gardner remains active with International Thriller Writers, the organization that once honored The Neighbor as Best Hardcover Novel. “We help each other navigate all these changes with social media — hey, you do this? Are we supposed to do that? — and support each other, and recommend each other’s books, because we just want readers to go out there and read great suspense novels and be so excited that they’re ready to buy the next.”
Why we keep walking into the dark house
Salfen asked what she keeps in mind when the words will not come — the thing that holds the path when the page is empty. Gardner did not talk about routine. She talked about why the genre exists.
“The real secret to suspense, and I think why we like reading suspense, is it’s problem solving. It can be dark, it can be gritty, it can be an impossible riddle. Like, how can a family of six disappear? Especially in this day and age, there’s got to be some hint somewhere, right? But what makes us feel better about it all — and that our neighbors have secrets, and that a house can be spooky — is that there are people out there, law enforcement, like the small-town police chief, the state cold cases. Their job is to bring order to that chaos, to solve that riddle. We’re going to enter this maybe dark universe, but at the end of the day, the riddle will be solved, and there are characters we can root for. They’re going to right these wrongs. I don’t think we ever get tired of that message.”
That is the contract You’ll Be Sorry keeps with the reader. The fledgling police chief of Shereford, the neighbors who think they know one another, the young couple restoring a house that will not be restored — all of them are hunting the same thing. Gardner is blunt about what she wants people to carry out of the book besides a good time.
“I’m really about the characters, and psychological suspense, and that people are really complicated. Here’s a small town where all the neighbors think they know each other, except they also understand they don’t, because someone had to have something to do with what happened 30 years ago. That ability to understand that we’re all imperfect, but that we’re also all doing the best we can — and everyone in this community at the end of the day, including this young couple, what they really want is the truth. That’s a very human desire. We really do genuinely want to know what happened.”
Then the title does its work. “The challenge is, how much? Does learning the truth — will you be sorry?”
More readers. More readers.
Salfen flagged the Raising Readers program printed in the back of the book — Grand Central’s effort to put new books in young hands. Gardner lit up. “We do [need more young readers], and that’s something Grand Central does, and I love that program. So yes, more readers, more readers.” It is of a piece with the rest of her public life: honors for work with at-risk children and animal rescue, a house full of dogs, a career built on the idea that stories are how a community metabolizes what it cannot say at the general store.
Salfen tried to book her for Texas before she vanished back onto the tour. She would love that, she said. In the meantime she is already “crime shopping.” The assignment she left AMFM with was half joke and all vocation: “If you know the perfect way to get away with murder that’s not been done before — that is the challenge.”
Until then, the lodge in Shereford is open. The footprints are still in the hallway. The newlyweds are still unpacking. You’ll Be Sorry is in hardcover, ebook, and audio from Grand Central Publishing. No prior Lisa Gardner required. A strong lamp, however, is recommended.
YOU’LL BE SORRY
Lisa Gardner · Grand Central Publishing · Hardcover on sale August 4, 2026
Instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller. A standalone thriller — no series reading required.
lisagardner.com · Interview by Paul Salfen for AMFM Magazine
