The Sin Eater (Common Reader Editions)

A troubled family gather at the ancestral home on the Welsh coast, awkwardly awaiting the death of the family patriarch. Polite conversation gives way to sly remarks and bickering in this tense reunion, and the household's respectable surface is scratched away to expose secret warfare, malicious games and viciously funny class-consciousness. In Alice Thomas Ellis's first novel, the caustic wit, brisk pace, and profound insight she is famous for are displayed to full effect.