Laura McHugh

Laura McHugh lives in Columbia, Missouri, with her husband and children. Her debut novel, The Weight of Blood, won both the 2015 International Thriller Writers award and a Silver Falchion award for best first novel, and was nominated for a Barry award, an Alex award, and a GoodReads Choice award. It was also named one of the best books of the year by BookPage, the Kansas City Star, and the Sunday Times (UK). Her last novel, Arrowood, is an Indie Next pick and a LibraryReads pick. Visit her website here.

SAFE AND SOUND (March 2024)

Six years after their cousin vanished from their home while they were sleeping, two sisters set out to learn the truth behind what happened—even if it puts their own lives in danger—in this haunting thriller from the internationally bestselling author of What’s Done in Darkness

In a town no one ever leaves, there are only so many places to hide.

As kids, Amelia and Kylee were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in Beaumont, Missouri, leaving only a smear of blood on a door. Scrappy and driven, Grace had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and going to work at the meatpacking plant. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better. 

Now, as their own high school graduation looms, Amelia and Kylee dream about getting out of Beaumont, but the likelihood of that happening seems as low as that of Grace being found. When human remains are discovered in town, the sisters think they finally know who took Grace—but as they dig deeper into her past, they unearth long-buried secrets and a growing list of suspects. 

Amelia and Kylee vow to find Grace, dead or alive. But as they draw closer to the truth and slip deeper into danger, they question how far someone would go to put a woman in her place, or to cover up a crime. The answer is worse than they could have imagined, and in the end, it won’t just be Grace they’re trying to save—they’ll have to fight for their lives.

THE WOLF WANTS IN (2019)

Sadie Keller is determined to find out how her brother died, even if no one else thinks it’s worth investigating. Untimely deaths are all too common in rural Blackwater, Kansas, where crime and overdoses are on the rise, and the small-town police force is consumed with the recent discovery of a child’s skull in the woods. Sadie is on her own, delving into the dark corners of a life her brother kept hidden and unearthing more questions than answers.

Eighteen-year-old Henley Pettit knows more than she’d like to about the seedy side of Blackwater, and she’s desperate to escape before she’s irreparably entangled in her family’s crimes. She dreams of disappearing and leaving her old life behind, but shedding the past is never easy, and getting out of town will be far more dangerous than she ever imagined.

As more bones are found in the woods, time is running out for Sadie to uncover the truth and for Henley to make her escape. Both women are torn between family loyalties and the weight of the secrets they carry, knowing full well that while some secrets are hard to live with, others will get you killed.

Like Laura McHugh’s previous award-winning thrillers, The Weight of Blood and Arrowood, The Wolf Wants In is an atmospheric, beautifully told novel that barrels toward a twisting, chilling end and keeps us turning the page to find out how these small-town secrets will unravel—and who will survive.

Rights: Random House, North America; Beta, Czech

ARROWOOD (2016)

Arrowood is the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River in southern Iowa. But the house has a mystery it has never revealed: It’s where Arden Arrowood’s younger twin sisters vanished on her watch twenty years ago—never to be seen again. After the twins’ disappearance, Arden’s parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. And Arden’s own life has fallen apart: She can’t finish her master’s thesis, and a misguided love affair has ended badly. She has held on to the hope that her sisters are still alive, and it seems she can’t move forward until she finds them. When her father dies and she inherits Arrowood, Arden returns to her childhood home determined to discover what really happened to her sisters that traumatic summer.

Arden’s return to the town of Keokuk—and the now infamous house that bears her name—is greeted with curiosity. But she is welcomed back by her old neighbor and first love, Ben Ferris, whose family, she slowly learns, knows more about the Arrowoods’ secrets and their small, closed community than she ever realized. With the help of a young amateur investigator, Arden tracks down the man who was the prime suspect in the kidnapping. But the house and the surrounding town hold their secrets close—and the truth, when Arden finds it, is more devastating than she ever could have imagined.

Arrowood is a powerful and resonant novel that examines the ways in which our lives are shaped by memory. As with her award-winning debut novel, The Weight of Blood, Laura McHugh has written a thrilling novel in which nothing is as it seems, and in which our longing for the past can take hold of the present in insidious and haunting ways.

"Superb and subtle psychological suspense, and a compelling mystery too ... I thought I knew who did it, but I was wrong - four times."—Lee Child

“This robust, old-fashioned gothic mystery has everything you’re looking for: a creepy old house, a tenant with a secret history, and even a few ghosts. Laura McHugh’s novel sits at the intersection of memory and history, astutely asking whether we carry the past or it carries us.”—Jodi Picoult

“An eloquently eerie tale.”—Booklist

“Poignant . . . lyrical.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A chilling, twisting tale of family, memory, and home . . . This engaging and thrilling tale about a young woman’s homecoming, the vagaries of memory, and the impact of tragedy on both a town and a family is a terrific choice for Laura Lippman and Sue Grafton readers.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“A pitch-perfect example of Southern Gothic”—The Times

“Magical second novel from the talented McHugh.”—Daily Mail

Rights: Spiegel & Grau, North America; Uitgeverij Cargo / De Bezige Bij, Netherlands; Limes, Germany

THE WEIGHT OF BLOOD (2014)

The town of Henbane sits deep in the Ozark Mountains. Folks there still whisper about Lucy Dane’smother, a bewitching stranger who appeared long enough to marry Carl Dane and then vanished when Lucy was just a child. Now on the brink of adulthood, Lucy experiences another loss when her friend Cheri disappears and is then found murdered, her body placed on display for all to see. Lucy’s family has deep roots in the Ozarks, part of a community that is fiercely protective of its own. Yet despite her close ties to the land, and despite her family’s influence, Lucy—darkly beautiful as her mother was—is always thought of by those around her as her mother’s daughter. When Cheri disappears, Lucy is haunted by the two lost girls—the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn’t save—and sets out with the help of a local boy, Daniel, to uncover the mystery behind Cheri’s death.

What Lucy discovers is a secret that pervades the secluded Missouri hills, and beyond that horrific revelation is a more personal one concerning what happened to her mother more than a decade earlier.

The Weight of Blood is an urgent look at the dark side of a bucolic landscape beyond the arm of the law, where a person can easily disappear without a trace. Laura McHugh proves herself a masterly storyteller who has created a harsh and tangled terrain as alive and unforgettable as the characters who inhabit it. Her mesmerizing debut is a compelling exploration of the meaning of family: the sacrifices we make, the secrets we keep, and the lengths to which we will go to protect the ones we love.

“With her riveting debut . . . Laura McHugh makes a strong bid at cementing a new tradition of regional crime fiction while keeping tourism low in the Ozarks.”—The LA Times

“Laura McHugh’s . . . conjures a menacingly beautiful Ozark setting and a nest of poisonous family secrets reminiscent of Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone.”—Vogue (“Spring’s Ten Best Suspense Novels”)

“[An] expertly crafted thriller.”—Entertainment Weekly, “The Must List

“Laura McHugh's suspenseful debut thriller combines taut pacing, sympathetic characters and wonderfully spooky atmosphere.” – Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Gripping . . . Her prose will not only keep readers turning the pages but also paints a real and believable portrait of the connections, alliances, and sacrifices that underpin rural, small-town life. . . . Strongly recommended for readers who enjoy thrillers by authors such as Laura Lippman and Tana French.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Laura McHugh’s vivid and enthralling The Weight of Blood centers on a mother and daughter in a seemingly benign yet deeply horrifying small town. It kept me on the edge of my seat from the first page to the last.”—Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of The Language of Flowers

Rights: Spiegel and Grau, North America; Hutchinson/Arrow, UK (two book deal); Rizzoli, Italy; Limes Verlag, Germany; Uitgeverij Cargo/De Bezige Bij, Netherlands (two book deal); AST, Russia; Calmann-Levy, France