When Luke Hadler kills his family, then himself, it splits the small Australian town of Kiewarra apart. In The Dry, by Jane Harper, Luke’s boyhood friend, Aaron Falk, comes back for the funeral after twenty years, having left as a teenager under the weight of suspicion that he and Luke had had something to do with the drowning death of a girl. Falk knows he and Luke lied about their whereabouts then; was Luke really capable of the savage murders of his wife and child? The town Aaron comes back to is dying under a record drought, his idyllic childhood haunts are gone, and he’s still being harassed for the girl’s death. Because he’s a federal agent now, however, the local police asks for his help with the investigation, and Falk begins to uncover the old and new secrets and bad blood of his hometown. Flashbacks reveal the meaning of the past events, and the tension escalates until the explosive conclusion. The scalding setting and riveting plot are perfect for the reader seeking thrills and chills.