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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE * With the emotional complexity of Everything I Never Told You and the psychological suspense of The Girl on the Train, O. Henry Prize winner Jan Ellison delivers a brilliantly paced, beautifully written debut novel about one woman's reckoning with a youthful mistake."Part psychological thriller, part character study . . . I peeled back the pages of this book as fast as I could." - The Huffington PostAt nineteen, Annie Black trades a bleak future in a washed-out California town for a London winter of drinking and abandon. Twenty years later, she is a San Francisco lighting designer and happily married mother of three who has put her reckless youth behind her. Then a photo from that distant winter in Europe arrives inexplicably in her mailbox, and an old obsession is awakened. Past and present collide, Annie's marriage falters, and her son takes a car ride that ends with his life hanging in the balance. Now Annie must confront her own transgressions and fight for her family by untangling the mysteries of the turbulent winter that drew an invisible map of her future. Gripping, insightful, and lyrical, A Small Indiscretion announces the arrival of a major new voice in literary suspense as it unfolds a story of denial, passion, forgiveness - and the redemptive power of love. Praise for A Small Indiscretion"Ellison is a tantalizing storyteller . . . moving her story forward with cinematic verve." - USA Today "Rich with suspense . . . Lovely writing guides us through, driven by a quiet generosity." - San Francisco Chronicle (Book Club pick) "Delicious, lazy-day reading. Just don't underestimate the writing." - O: The Oprah Magazine (Editor's Pick) "Rich and detailed . . . The plot explodes delightfully, with suspense and a few twists. Using second-person narration and hypnotic prose, Ellison's debut novel is both juicy and beautifully written. How do I know it's juicy? A stranger started reading it over my shoulder on the New York City subway, and told me he was sorry that I was turning the pages too quickly." - Flavorwire"Are those wild college days ever really behind you? Happily married Annie finds out." - Cosmopolitan"An impressive fiction debut . . . both a psychological mystery and a study of the divide between desire and duty." - San Jose Mercury News"A novel to tear through on a plane ride or on the beach . . . I was drawn into a web of secrets, a world of unrequited love and youthful mistakes that feel heightened and more romantic on the cold winter streets of London, Paris, and Ireland." - Bustle "Ellison renders the California landscape with stunning clarity. . . . She writes gracefully, with moments of startling insight. . . . Her first novel is an emotional thriller, skillfully plotted in taut, visual scenes." - The Rumpus"To read A Small Indiscretion is to eat fudge before dinner: slightly decadent behavior, highly caloric, and extremely satisfying. . . . An emotional detective story that . . . mirrors real life in ways that surprise and inspire." - New York Journal of Books"If you liked Gone Girl for its suspenseful look inside the psychology of a bad marriage, try A Small Indiscretion. . . . It touches many of the same nerves." - StyleCaster
About the Author
Visit Jan at www.janellison.com or at www.facebook.com/janellison.author
Jan Ellison is the USA Today bestselling author of the debut novel, A Small Indiscretion, which was a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. A graduate of Stanford, Jan left college for a year at nineteen to study French in Paris, work in an office in London, and try her hand at writing. Twenty years later, her notebooks from that year became the germ of A Small Indiscretion.
Jan spent two years in Hawaii, Australia and Southeast Asia after college. She worked as a waitress and a typist, trekked solo in the Himalayas, took trains across India, and job-hunted, unsuccessfully, in Hong Kong. Then she returned to Silicon Valley and ran marketing for a financial software startup for five years. After the company went public, Jan left to raise her kids and write.
Jan holds an MFA from San Francisco State University. Her essays about parenting, travel and writing have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Writer's Digest and elsewhere. Her short fiction has received numerous awards, including the O. Henry Prize for her first published story. Jan grew up in L.A. and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband of twenty years and their four children.
www.janellison.com
www.facebook.com/janellison.author
