The Turnout

'A twisting, turning story of revenge and redemption' STYLIST

It was the three of them. Always the three of them. Until it wasn't.

Dara and Marie were trained as ballet dancers by their glamorous mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents died in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters took over running the school together with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student.
But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker - a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration - an interloper arrives and threatens their delicate balance.

The instant New York Times bestseller

'Impossible to put down, creepy and claustrophobic. It's WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE in ballet shoes' STEPHEN KING

'Compulsively readable' RUTH WARE

'A book you will not be able to forget' MARK BILLINGHAM

'My thriller of the year' JAKE KERRIDGE, DAILY TELEGRAPH, BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

'The feeling of menace grows stronger with every page' GUARDIAN

'Slow-burning and feverish, with all the intensity of a classic American film noir' MAIL ON SUNDAY

'Charged with foreboding, the novel throbs with gothic tension' IRISH TIMES

'Dark and juicy and tinged with horror' NEW YORK TIMES

'Dark and mesmerising' HARRIET TYCE

'This is Megan Abbott working at the absolute height of her talent' ATTICA LOCKE

'There's no one who captures the atmosphere of a tight-knit hothouse world, in all its feverish beauty and brutality, quite like Megan Abbott' TANA FRENCH


Genre: Mystery

"All one needs to know about a Megan Abbott book is that it's a Megan Abbott book -- dreamy, sexy, a deep dive into a subculture that has been exhaustively researched. The Turnout is all those things and more, taking you so far into the world of a small ballet school that you feel the characters' aches and pains in your joints, your feet and, most dangerous of all, your heart." - Laura Lippman

"There is not a writer alive who is better at investigating the tension and threat of violence at the centre of women's lives than Megan Abbott-because no one else is looking at the violence from within women's lives, as opposed to outside threats on trains, planes, in windows, or on dark, shadowy streets. Megan goes into the heart of female spaces and finds the ugly in all that pretty, the dark in all that light, with breath-taking suspense. The Turnout has notes of James M. Cain and Alfred Hitchcock, but it's better because it's so fresh and unexpected, so wholly revelatory. I turned page after page, holding my breath in fear, and also excitement, about what might happen in this run-down ballet school, what blood red might be lurking behind all that pink. This is Megan Abbott working at the absolute height of her talent." - Attica Locke

"Abbott creates a dark and mesmerising world and, as always, is so brilliant at portraying women and girls and their competition and complexities ... It makes Black Swan look like a children's story." - Harriet Tyce