Megan Collins - The Family Plot

Sharon Tate, Andrew Borden, Charlie Lindbergh, Black Dahlia—if you immediately recognize these murder victims, then you’re a Murderino just like Megan Collins. Her third thriller, The Family Plot (Atria), hailed “the quintessential summer thriller for true crime enthusiasts” by Apartment Therapy, follows an unconventional family obsessed with true crime—until they’re at the center of one. The Lighthouse siblings were raised in a secluded Rhode Island mansion by true crime-obsessed parents, who named them after murder victims—Dahlia, Charlie, Tate, and Andy—and encouraged murder reenactments. At 26, Dahlia remains haunted by her upbringing and hasn’t been able to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother Andy, who vanished a decade ago. Now that her father has passed away, Dahlia returns to the house she’s avoided for years, along with Charlie and Tate. But the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father’s plot is another body—Andy’s, his skull split open with an ax, just like his namesake. As Dahlia grapples with her own grief and horror, she realizes that her eccentric family, and the mansion itself, may hold the answers to what happened to her twin. Megan Collins is the author of The Family Plot, Behind the Red Door, and The Winter Sister. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She has taught creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Central Connecticut State University, and she is the managing editor of 3Elements Review. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Off the Coast, Spillway, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Rattle. She lives in Connecticut.