All Our Lies Are True

by Lisa Manterfield

Overview

All Our Lies Are True is a gripping page-turner and a deeply moving portrayal of a woman longing for freedom from her past.

For far too long, Abby Kirkpatrick has lived with survivor's guilt. She was only six when her twin sister, Cassie, vanished without a trace from the room where they slept, an unsolved mystery that continues to haunt her family. Now, Abby is ready for a fresh start-a new town and a promising career in child psychology. Maybe if she can save just one child, it will ease her conscience about losing Cassie.

But when Cassie's remains are discovered, Abby's family is thrust into a devastating "trial by media," with her father emerging as the prime suspect. Despite her older sister's efforts to protect the family from fresh trauma, Abby returns to the crime scene, determined to uncover the truth about that fateful night. As she unravels a web of secrets, Abby realizes the close-knit family she has always trusted might be protecting a killer.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781737304838
Publisher:	Steel Rose Press
Publication date:	09/12/2023
Pages:	284
Sales rank:	437,540
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Lisa Manterfield is the award-winning author of A Strange Companion and The Smallest Thing, and two works of non-fiction. Originally from northern England, she now lives in Northern California with her husband and two cats. When not writing, she can be found hiking in the redwoods and daydreaming in her vegetable garden. Learn more at LisaManterfield.com.

Editorial Reviews

03/04/2024

Manterfield follows up The Smallest Thing with the gut-wrenching story of a young woman grappling with the long shadow of her sister’s disappearance. When Abby Kirkpatrick was six years old, her twin sister, Cassie, vanished from their shared bedroom. The ensuing investigation cast suspicion on the girl’s father, and the community support the family received in the days following the tragedy quickly dried up. In response, the Kirkpatricks moved to a remote corner of the U.K., where Abby grew up in a “strange, isolated world.” Sixteen years later, she’s preparing to leave her troubled home life behind for college. Just as she’s about to accept an admission offer, two police officers arrive at the Kirkpatricks’ home with news that Cassie’s corpse has been found in a dried-up lake near their old house, with a fracture on her skull that suggests foul play. The reopening of the case reopens old wounds, as Abby grapples both with her foggy memories of that night, and renewed suspicions that her father may have played a part in her sister’s death. Manterfield enriches her familiar premise with lived-in family dynamics and legitimately gripping suspense. This will linger in readers’ minds. (Self-published)

Publishers Weekly

2023-07-13
After the body of her missing twin sister is found, a young woman investigates new questions about her initial disappearance in Manterfield’s mystery.

Abby Kirkpatrick’s fraternal twin sibling, Cassie, mysteriously vanished when they were both 6 years old, placing the family under the white-hot lights of public scrutiny. With an aim to start afresh, the English family moved to a town in Great Britain in the middle of nowhere—a “place people drove by on the way to somewhere else.” Now 22, homeschooled Cassie wants to break free from her sheltered life and study child psychology at a university. Then police suddenly show up at the family’s door with shocking news: Cassie’s body has been found in a nearby lake bed, and the physical evidence unambiguously points to murder. Once again, the Kirkpatricks bear the weight of public suspicion, and Manterfield powerfully captures their ordeal in these pages: “It was starting again. The life we had rebuilt, the quiet, secluded life we’d hidden behind, was about to be shaken upside down. We’d be The Killer Kirkpatricks again.” Abby’s father, Robert, is quickly singled out as the prime suspect, and Abby begins to have her own suspicions that he might be responsible in some way—and even that her mother, Theresa, is covering for him; throughout, these nagging worries are rendered artfully, and with a great deal of suspense. Indeed, Manterfield exercises an impressive display of authorial restraint, disclosing just enough information to keep the reader riveted, and never so much that the reins are loosened. Overall, this novel shows itself to be more ambitious than many other crime dramas, raising philosophically searching questions about the nature of trauma and memory, as well as the moral dimensions of familial loyalty. It’s a compelling tale, as thoughtful as it is haunting.

A harrowing and unpredictable yet psychologically subtle story.

Kirkus Reviews