Looking for Peyton Place: A Novel - Couverture souple

A bold new novel about small-town secrets and deadly corruption - inspired by Grace Metalious, pioneering author of Peyton Place.
For Annie Barnes, going home to Middle River means dealing with truths long hidden, some of which she buried there herself. But it is a journey she knows she must take if she is to put to rest her misgivings about her mother's recent death.
To an outsider, Middle River is a picture-perfect New Hampshire town. But Annie grew up there, and she knows all its secrets - just like her idol, Grace Metalious, author of the infamous novel Peyton Place, which laid a small town's sexual secrets bare for all the world to see.
Inspired by Grace to get out of Middle River, Annie Barnes is now a bestselling author with a good life in Washington D.C. When the residents hear Annie is returning for a lengthy visit, everyone, including her two sisters, believes she's come home to write about them.
But it is her mother's death that has brought her back, and soon her probing questions start to make people nervous. When she discovers evidence of dangerous pollutants emanating from the local paper mill - poisons that she comes to believe contributed to her mother's fatal illness - Annie finds herself at odds with most of the town's inhabitants, including her sisters. Because the mill is the town's main employer, everyone is afraid of what might happen if Annie digs deeper, and their fears soon start to turn ugly.
For Annie, though, there is no turning back, as passion and rage propel her forward in a determined quest. Coming face-to-face with decades of secrets and lies, she knows she must find the strength to move beyond the legacy of Grace Metalious, defying her past to heal the wounds of the town and her own family.

A picture-perfect New Hampshire town hides a history of scandal and intrigue -- a legacy Annie Barnes has never shaken since growing up in tiny Middle River. Five decades ago the area was rocked by a bombshell of a book, Peyton Place, and its author, Grace Metalious, who seemed to know everyone's most intimate secrets. Now a bestselling novelist herself, Annie has come home to find answers to the strange circumstances of her mother's recent death, which leads her to uncover a shocking truth about the local paper mill. The townspeople fear Annie intends to pen a Peyton Place of her very own, and no one wants her stirring up trouble. But one intriguing man is captivated by Annie's determined spirit -- and he wants to give the people of Middle River something to talk about....