It’s time to travel back to the 1950s for one of 2027’s most thrilling releases. The Sins of Good People by Kelly Young Chang is a story of secrets, mysteries, and lies, showing how they craft a world of deceit and darkness.
It’s perfect for fans of true crime documentaries, as well as fans of Sharp Objects and My Darling Girl. You’re pulled into a world of complex and flawed characters, and a mystery that you can’t help but try to solve along the way.
What’s the downside? Only that you have to wait until April 20, 2027. It’s going to be worth that wait, but it doesn’t mean we have to like it! The Sins of Good People is part of akaSTORY’s inaugural list of novels, a new commercial fiction imprint from Abrams that is set to bring “propulsive, of-the-moment fiction across all genres.”
And The Sins of Good People isn’t going to just fit in one genre. Not only is it a twisty mystery, but it also works well for those who adore historical fiction. Set in the 1950s, it brings a time without mobile phones and electronic payment methods, creating a somewhat easier way of life — of course, it also means it’s a little easier for people to go missing without anyone reporting them!
That’s what happens, as a small town is rocked when Lily Ambrose’s body washes ashore years after her disappearance. When she left, all that was left behind were a pair of her shoes and a family Bible. That’s it, and nobody really wanted to answer the questions surrounding the situation.
Now that her body has been found, the small town is willing to look the other way. The convenient truth is easier to handle than the dark secrets that many hold. However, the truth can only stay buried for so long, and we get to the bottom of it all through the multiple POVs as Lily’s story is told. What happened to Lily Ambrose?
Take a look at the gorgeous cover, along with the 3D view to see the haunted vibe of the sprayed edges before delving into the excerpt below:
Courtesy of akaSTORY, an Abrams imprint Courtesy of akaSTORY, an Abrams imprintIsn’t there just something about the way the rain falls over the house with the crows flying off in the distance? Crows remember, and there’s that sense of knowing the truth is going to reveal itself.
This is Chang’s debut novel that has been a passion project for decades, with her sharing, “The Sins of Good People has been decades in the making. I drafted some of the earliest scenes of this novel when I was only 10 years old. There were many times I turned from this story to work on other things, but the characters haunted me, always pulling me back into their intricate web of small-town secrets. I’m thrilled to finally share these (sometimes complicated) characters with the world, and I hope they resonate deeply with readers as they have resonated with me.”
Are you ready for a mystery that your brain won’t allow you to silence?
HENRIETTA
Fall 1951
Doing the normal things proves to be the most difficult. Eating my breakfast is like walking on hot coals.
I pour extra cream in my oats, but even so, I can barely swallow. In the end, I plug my nose, down as much of it as I can, and mix the rest in with the coffee grounds. I wonder if they’ll check the garbage? No of course not, no need for that.
I wash my bowl and put it on the drying rack, and it’s as though I’m a stagehand setting the props for a play. It must look like someone lives here. Like someone had their normal morning routine, I tell myself. Then I shake my head. Someone does live here. I do have my morning routine. I hold myself. I will keep it together.
Gwendolyn comes in from feeding the chickens, shaking the rain from her shawl, and I drop my arms. It’s always bothered me that her features are softer than mine. Her brown hair curls attractively over her forehead—a grown-out effect of the ridiculous Mamie Eisenhower bangs she attempted this summer—her cheeks are ruddy from the chilly fall air, her eyes shine, and her smile comes easily.
I have a widow’s peak that I used to fantasize about shaving off as a teenager, but my girlfriends warned me it would grow back thicker. And my skin is painfully pale, my cheekbones too sharp. Gwendolyn and I still wear black after Father’s passing, and the effect makes me even more angular, while it complements her roundness.
Gwendolyn’s eyes rove around the kitchen. She asks if the child is up yet, as I know she will.
I don’t answer immediately, and she adds, “Oh, I hope she is feeling well.”
“Let her be,” I say, my tongue dry in my mouth. “Growth spurt,” I manage to get out.
Gwendolyn smiles and busies herself with lighting the stove for the kettle. “Isn’t it so nice, Henny, having a child around the house again?” she asks, humming to herself as she strikes a match and holds it to the gas.
When the burner ignites, Gwendolyn waves the match until it goes out and throws it onto the counter while she places the kettle on the stove. Without a word, I retrieve the blackened match from the pile of coffee filters where it landed and drop it instead into the porcelain sink as I’ve told Gwendolyn to do a million times. She doesn’t notice me, or the match, but I watch her back stiffen when she is done with the kettle, and I know what comes next.
“What about Lily?” she asks, as I knew she would. “This is late for her,” she adds, her eyes flicking to the wall clock above the doorway, as if she needs to prove the validity of her question against my cold silence.
It is time for me to suggest Gwendolyn bring her a tray. She’s slept in, I rehearsed. Perhaps she’d like a tray? It is important that I am not the one to discover Lily missing.
“She’s tired,” I hear myself say instead. “She wasn’t herself yester-day.” My voice is steady, wholesome. I am writing new lines. They are pouring out of me; I’ll have to be careful how much I improvise. I am numb. That’s good. Be numb.
But the point seems to land anyway, because Gwendolyn is already fetching the wooden dinner tray from beneath the sink and setting it with some of Lily’s favorite freshly baked sourdough rolls and fruit.
“Everyone likes to be pampered every now and again,” she whispers as she butters the rolls. Her eyes flick to me, as if she is afraid I will say that some people are pampered too much. But today, I am silent.
And I remain silent while Gwendolyn busies herself with Lily’s tray. When she is done, she reaches into the vase of flowers on the table, pull-ing out a white lily for a small bud vase on the tray. It’s the little love note they’ve shared since Lily was born. Again, it is hard to swallow. I turn to the coffeepot. I’ve already cleaned it. I will clean it again. Gwendolyn won’t notice.
I am drying the pot with a towel as she returns to the kitchen with a wrinkle between her brows, tray still in hand, lily still in vase.
“Henny, Lily didn’t say she had an errand this morning, did she?” she asks me.
“What?” I ask, putting the pot back. I’ve practiced that what. Not too harsh, not too puzzled. Simple. Loose and airy. An innocent what?
“She’s not in her bedroom. Or the bathroom,” Gwendolyn says.
I turn and brush past Gwendolyn, who follows me with a too-heavy trod, like she always does.
In the corner of Lily’s bedroom, the narrow cot we rolled out for the child is tucked against the wall. Her little shape rises and falls slightly with her breaths under the waffle-weave blanket.
But in the center of the room, Lily’s mahogany-framed bed is empty. It is made neatly, not even wrinkled. In a whisper, Gwendolyn suggests that it hasn’t been slept in, and I don’t respond. I haven’t worked out yet if it is safest to agree with Gwendolyn or counter her.
I turn my gaze to Lily’s satchel in the corner, just by the vanity.
In this moment, I have a vision of her, as she was when she was sev-enteen and still living here. Brushing her hair in that mirror. Primping and grooming for hours at a time. Rolling her eyes at me when I hint the image hasn’t changed since the last time she checked.
I think I am going to be sick.
“Her bag,” I say, pointing. My hand shakes. I don’t know if Gwendo-lyn notices. “She hasn’t left.”
Gwendolyn and I turn to each other and stare. I open my mouth to suggest she went for a walk, and then I close it. It’s raining. And if she was outside, Gwendolyn would have seen her while she fed the chickens. It is the wrong suggestion to make. It will puzzle Gwendolyn, but not in the right way.
Gwendolyn opens her mouth and then closes it in dull imitation of what I’ve just done. Her eyes wrinkle. Perhaps I know her too well, have lived with her too long, but I think I know what she was going to say. I would bet my life that Gwendolyn was going to suggest Lily ran to Main Street for some cream or some other little thing from Gilman’s, but then of course Gwendolyn will have remembered that I bought more cream yesterday and it is in the icebox, or that Gilman’s doesn’t open until 9:00 and it is currently 7:55.
End of Act I. Enter Act II.
Waiting is the worst part.
I know we cannot call the police too soon. There’s no reason we should do anything other than wait for Lily to come back from wherever she’s gone.
But we also cannot call them too late. Otherwise the question will be, Why did you wait? I am unsure if I will be able to cope with why ques-tions. The what questions, the whens, those I know I can handle. They are answered with facts that are easily verified by Gwendolyn. Best to steer clear of the whys.
These are the moments I wish Gwendolyn was made of something tougher, so I could take the back seat now. So I could hem and haw and wonder, until Gwendolyn suggests we call the police. And then I could hem and haw and wonder some more, and the second time she suggests it, I could nod and say, Yes, perhaps we’d better.
But I know Gwendolyn will never initiate anything. She knows, whether by my fault or hers, that this is my role. She will not suggest an action—she will simply follow mine.
***
At 8:17, the child awakes. She enters the kitchen groggily, looking around confused until Gwendolyn fixes her pancakes and a large glass of orange juice.
I have never been so aware of my body as I am sitting across the table from this child, watching her eat. I wait for her to ask about Lily or the lake. I wait and wait, my fingers tingling with pins and needles, for the questions from the night before to come. But all the child asks is if she can play with the paper dolls Gwendolyn cut for her yesterday, and once Gwendolyn gets her set up with her toy in the living room, I can breathe again.
In the end I wait until 9:08, and then I call Richard Gilman to ask if Lily has stopped into the store. I hear my voice like it is coming from someone else. It is curious, puzzled.
I hang up and tell Gwendolyn he hasn’t seen her.
A couple minutes later, I ask Gwendolyn, “Do you suppose we should call the police?”
Gwendolyn is startled. With a sinking feeling, I realize what her face would look like to an outsider, and how it looks to me. Someone else might think Gwendolyn is startled by the idea that the police need to get involved. That it is the first time she realizes something frightening may have happened to Lily, and it startles her. But I know that my sister is not startled by what I am saying, but how I am saying it. I’ve startled her by asking what she thinks we ought to do.
Normally it would come out differently. I suppose we should call the police now, I’d say, reaching again for the receiver. Gwendolyn could nod along with me or not, but it wouldn’t matter, because it wouldn’t really be a question.
Gwendolyn turns a ridiculous shade of red. “I, I don’t—oh, Henny!” she says.
“I don’t know what else to do, Gwendolyn,” I say. “What do you think?” I am pushing at the seams of her. How much pressure can her stitches take before she bursts out of herself, white stuffing and buttons and all?
She gasps for air, and we both realize she hasn’t taken a breath since she last spoke.
That’s enough, I suppose. I want this to be our decision. When we tell the police, I can say, And then Gwendolyn, I asked you what we should do, if we should call the police. And you said, “Yes, let’s.” Remember? And she will nod helplessly, remembering only how startled she was that she was called upon to lead. I have cracked the natural order of things, and it is just enough, and now I can close it up again with an invisible stitch.
I dial the Grenning police slowly, and Marge patches me through to Sheriff Tate.
He promises to ride through Grenning in his patrol car, to ask around. He asks if Lily was acting strange, if she said anything about leaving early. I tell him about her bag, about the bed that wasn’t slept in. With those details added, he promises to search the woods. Once I hang up, I look at Gwendolyn. She shivers. I wonder how long it will take them to start a proper search and find Lily’s body.
How long does she need to be missing before they drag the lake?
You can already pre-order The Sins of Good People by Kelly Young Chang. Get ready for the answers in April 2027.
Related: Cover Reveal + Excerpt: ‘The Lookalike’ Is the Twisted Thriller You’ll Be Obsessed With (Exclusive)
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