The Stepdaughter

Discover Caroline Blackwood''s darkly brilliant debut - a perfect rediscovered classic for fans of Shirley Jackson and Ottessa Moshfegh

''A bracingly nasty book . . . Splendid, dark, often very funny'' MEGAN NOLAN, Telegraph

A lavish Upper West Side apartment is the site of a familial cold war about to enter a phase of dangerous escalation.

J is a lonely woman without the luxury of being alone. Her husband has fled to Paris with his latest flame, leaving J with not only their own four-year-old daughter, Sally Ann, but the sulky, cake-mix addicted, thirteen-year-old Renata, a leftover from his previous marriage.

Writing letters in her head to imaginary friends, J delights in dwelling on the hapless Renata, who ''invites a kind of cruelty''. This is an invitation J fully intends to take up - and like so many stepmothers before her, she will find that wickedness, once indulged, is a difficult habit to kick. A mordant black splinter of a