Nightwatching

Description

Unputdownable · Psychological Suspense · Horror · Tense · Gripping

A mother is forced to the breaking point when her life and the lives of her children are threatened by an intruder

Home alone with her young children during a blizzard, a mother tucks her son back into bed in the middle of the night. She hears a noise—old houses are always making some kind of noise. But this sound is disturbingly familiar: it’s the tread of footsteps, unusually heavy and slow, coming up the stairs.

She sees the figure of a man appear down the hallway, shrouded in the shadows. Terrified, she quietly wakes her children and hustles them into the oldest part of the house, a tiny, secret room concealed behind a wall. There they hide as the man searches for them, trying to tempt the children out with promises and scare the mother into surrender.

In the suffocating darkness, the mother struggles to remain calm, to plan. Should she search for a weapon or attempt escape? But then she catches another glimpse of him. That face. That voice. And at once she knows her situation is even more dire than she’d feared, because she knows exactly who he is—and what he wants.Praise for Nightwatching:

“[Nightwatching] guarantees you will stay up, as I did, way past bedtime, tearing through pages to find out what happens, or you’ll be too petrified to sleep, or maybe both.”
—Mary Louise Kelly, NPR

“How many of us have had the experience of hearing an old house creak in the night and wondering if it was something more? That uneasiness becomes terror in Sierra’s riveting debut. . . . What happens next falls between horror and suspense, landing with almost unbearable intensity. . . Nightwatching [is] among the best debuts I’ve read in years.”
—LA Times

“Sierra’s debut offers hold-your-breath suspense, while delving into psychological and emotional fear.”
—Washington Post

“Nightwatching grows in stature and becomes not just a nerve-shredding page-turner but also an ingenious guessing game and an absorbing account of a woman’s struggle to make her voice heard.”
—Minneapolis StarTribune

“The extreme tension . . . triumphs in a gripping and convincing finale. Not for the faint-hearted.”
—The Daily Mail

“So terrifying that it can easily be considered horror-adjacent. . . The intense plunge into the main character’s traumatic experience feels incredibly real and immediate, and the suspense doesn’t let up until the last moments of the novel.”
—BookPage

“Tracy Sierra has done the impossible: changed my mind about the home invasion thriller. . . Gripping.”
—CrimeReads

“One of the most terrifying—and brilliant—thrillers I have ever read. . . Gripping from start to finish.” 
—The Guardian (London)

“The most gripping thriller I have ever read. . . I was astounded at how Sierra kept up the pace in this high-wire act of a thriller, but she doesn’t put a single foot wrong.” 
—Scary Mommy

“Nightwatching is just as much a psychological thriller as it is a horror story. Powerful and absorbing, it was not easy to put this book down until I finished it. In my opinion, that is the mark of an excellent story. Highly recommended.”
—Fresh Fiction

“Outstanding. . . As grippingly suspenseful as the plot is, Sierra’s first outing boasts other strengths just as noteworthy, from its transportingly eerie setting to its indelible main character, a petite, prototypical ‘good girl’ pushed to the brink by years of being underestimated, patronized, and disbelieved by men with power. The icing on the cake is the splendid ending, which feels both surprising and inevitable.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Straddling the line between psychological thriller and domestic horror, Sierra’s auspicious debut immediately plunges readers headlong into its unnamed protagonist’s waking nightmare. . . tense, emotionally resonant . . . Well-timed flashbacks add context and poignancy. Fiercely feminist and viscerally terrifying.”
—Kirkus (starred review)

“I barely breathed while reading this incredibly tense, chilling thriller.”
—Good Housekeeping (UK)

“Nightmarish—you won’t be able to look away.”
—Shari Lapena, New York Times bestselling author of The Couple Next Door

“If Stephen King and Dean Koontz co-wrote a thriller, the result would be a lot like Nightwatching. Eerily atmospheric, pulse-pounding and unputdownable, this book will keep you up at night.”
—Sarah Pekkanen, New York Times bestselling author of Gone Tonight

“Very few books are as sharp, clever, and utterly terrifying as Nightwatching. Read at your own risk.”
—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of We Begin at the End

“I loved Nightwatching. It is the most gripping thriller I have ever read.”
—Gillian McAllister, New York Times bestselling author of Wrong Place Wrong Time

“I am trying to think of a book that has grabbed me by the throat more quickly. None comes to mind.”
—Linwood Barclay, New York Times bestselling author of The Lie Maker

“The most gripping psychological thriller I’ve ever read. Heart-thumping and mesmerizing, a masterclass in tension and terror, it’s also a creative, thoughtful portrait of maternal fear and love–a must read.”
—Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push

“Nightwatching is an intense and claustrophobic thriller–it’s terrifying and unputdownable.”
—Karin Slaughter, New York Times and #1 international bestselling author of After That Night

“Few novels have affected me like this one. Nightwatching is acutely frightening and beautifully written, as tender as it is terrifying. I can’t remember rooting for a character quite so hard!”
—Abigail Dean, New York Times bestselling author of Girl A

“Tracy Sierra is an impressive new talent. Nightwatching is riveting, by turns a chilling account of a horrifying ordeal and a whip-smart snapshot of marriage, motherhood, and the female experience in a man’s world. Psychological terror at its finest.”
—Gilly Macmillan, New York Times bestselling author of The Manor House

“Breathtakingly superb on every level. A proper tour de force that delivers the highest possible grip factor from first word to last, and a more satisfying resolution than I dared to hope for.”
—Sophie Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Couple at the Table

“Nightwatching is at once a terrifying descent into my deepest maternal fears, a blistering social critique, and an elegiac portrait of what it means—and what it takes—to endure. One of the most haunting, gripping novels I’ve read in a long time.” 
—Katie Gutierrez, national bestselling author of More Than You’ll Ever Know

“So tense, so thought-provoking.The definition of ‘can’t put down.’”
—Araminta Hall, author of Imperfect WomenTracy Sierra was born and raised in the Colorado mountains. She is an attorney who currently lives in New England in an antique colonial-era home complete with its own secret room. When not writing, she spends time with her husband and two children. Nightwatching is her debut novel.Questions and Topics for Discussion
 
1. Traditionally, the home is said to be a woman’s sphere and a man’s castle. How does the unnamed heroine in Nightwatching see her home and herself in relation to it? Is that view shaped by her being a woman and a mother? Does her perspective change after the Corner violates that space?
 
2. The police think that the heroine is either delusional or has purposefully fabricated the Corner. Did you understand their perspective given the lack of evidence, or did you believe the heroine and her children’s eyewitness accounts should have been given the benefit of the doubt? How has the heroine been doubted throughout her life, and what do you think are the roots of that doubt? Did you think the Corner was real? If not, why didn’t you believe the heroine?
 
3. How are the men in Nightwatching shaped by their ideas of what a man should be? Are there generational differences? How do these ideas impact the heroine’s young son?
 
4. Nightwatching’s main character faces enormous challenges as a mother. What do we expect mothers to sacrifice for their children? What does the heroine sacrifice, both before and after the Corner breaks into her home?
 
5. Why do you think the heroine is able to recognize the Corner is a threat when she first meets him, but her husband is not? Have you ever felt uncomfortable about an interaction without being able to articulate why? Has your intuition more often been right or wrong when it comes to first impressions?
 
6. At the end of Nightwatching, the heroine observes how the media quickly loses interest in her family as survivors, and their attention instead focuses on the Corner’s background and possible motives. Do you think that grim fascination is accurate to life and to true crime reporting? Why do you think the heroine is disinterested in the Corner’s backstory?
 
7. Did you think the heroine had a good marriage? How much sympathy do you have for her husband’s need for his father’s love after his father’s assault on the heroine?
 
8. Nightwatching’s heroine is not as physically strong as the Corner. What strengths and strategies does she lean on to make up for her relative physical weakness? Do you think these characteristics are valued by society, or discounted? In what ways does the heroine exploit her perceived weaknesses to turn the tables on the Corner?
 
9. When the sergeant tells the heroine that it is “extreme” to assume the Corner was targeting her daughter, she counters that he ask the women he knows what it was like being a little girl. Do you think that as a society we have a difficult time confronting how young we were when an adult first made us uncomfortable? Do you think it is better to discuss or not to discuss these experiences?
 
10. The death of the heroine’s mother and the acquittal of the man that killed her causes the heroine to believe from an early age that the world is not just. How does this set her apart from other people, including her grandmother? Do you believe that history tends toward justice? Do you think the heroine’s worldview is cynical, or simply realistic?
 
11. Nightwatching is set in a New England farmhouse built in the early 1700s, and occurs primarily in late 2020. How does the long history of the house and the recent history of COVID-19 impact the heroine’s reaction to her circumstances? How does it influence the Corner’s actions?US

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