Sharon Tate, Andrew Borden, Charlie Lindbergh, Black Dahlia\u2014if you immediately recognize these murder victims, then you\u2019re a Murderino just like Megan Collins. Her third thriller, The Family Plot (Atria), hailed \u201cthe quintessential summer thriller for true crime enthusiasts\u201d by Apartment Therapy, follows an unconventional family obsessed with true crime\u2014until they\u2019re at the center of one.
\nThe Lighthouse siblings were raised in a secluded Rhode Island mansion by true crime-obsessed parents, who named them after murder victims\u2014Dahlia, Charlie, Tate, and Andy\u2014and encouraged murder reenactments. At 26, Dahlia remains haunted by her upbringing and hasn\u2019t been able to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother Andy, who vanished a decade ago.
\nNow that her father has passed away, Dahlia returns to the house she\u2019s avoided for years, along with Charlie and Tate. But the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father\u2019s plot is another body\u2014Andy\u2019s, 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.
\nMegan 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.