DEAD WATER: (The Runaway Series Book 1)

FOR FANS OF THE HOUSEMAID, DEAD CALM, AND THE WHITE LOTUS

She swore she'd never get involved again. Then she saw the child.

The woman who calls herself Dita Novak has one rule. Stay invisible. She has changed her hair, her accent, her name, her entire identity. A fill-in stewardess on a luxury catamaran in the British Virgin Islands is the perfect place to disappear. All she has to do is pour the champagne, keep her head down, and let these people's secrets stay theirs.

Then she watches the guests board.

Bennett Hudson is a federal judge with a flawless Highland Park reputation, a stunning younger wife, and a charm that goes oily the moment no one's looking. His wife Rachael has engineered every glittering detail of his surprise fiftieth. The elite guest list, the private charter, the perfect facade. But Dita has spent her whole life reading rooms to survive, and she can see what the others won't. There's a child aboard this boat. And something about the way that child goes quiet is very, very wrong.

Dita knows what it costs to get involved. It's the reason she's a fugitive. She tells herself to look away.

She never can.

Then they sail past the last of the cell signal. No coast guard in range. No way off.

Miles from shore, the polish starts to crack. Old affairs surface. Money and reputation turn lethal. The guests begin turning on each other. Then a dead body shows up on the deck.

Everyone aboard starts asking the same question. Which one of them did it?

They have no idea they're asking the wrong question.

Told in alternating points of view from a cast whose secrets detonate one by one — a fugitive, a bestselling author, a polished PR wife, a watchful grandmother — Dead Water is a compulsive, twist-driven psychological thriller about the lengths a woman will go to protect a child who isn't hers, and the cost of refusing to look the other way. Set against the breathtaking, treacherous beauty of the British Virgin Islands, where the water is gorgeous, the risks are real, and the most dangerous person aboard is the one no one is watching.

A luxury escape with a body count. A predator who's never once been held to account. And a woman with everything to lose and nothing left to hide behind.

When the storm finally breaks, only one of them swims away. And the truth she's carrying is worse than anyone guessed.

Pamela Fagan Hutchins is the kind of thriller writer who does her research the hard way, by actually owning a catamaran in the British Virgin Islands.

Her boat in Tortola is named Annalise. The water is exactly as gorgeous and treacherous as it sounds. And yes, she absolutely sat on that deck thinking about all the ways a luxury Caribbean charter could go catastrophically wrong.

When she's not plotting fictional murders at sea, Pamela splits her time between a lodge in Wyoming (Alaskan malamutes, dog sledding, mountain trails — the full cinematic package), a cabin on Lake Mooselookmeguntic in the Maine wilderness, and the growing number of countries she's temporarily called home, including Denmark and the south of France. She married a man from the Virgin Islands, which means she has both the local knowledge and the sunburn to prove her Caribbean credentials. He came with five kids for her to parent along with her own two. Let’s just say the plot line in Dead Water hits hard for her.

She is, predictably, obsessed with The White Lotus and The Housemaidbut also Longmire and Yellowstone, and considers missing sleep over a great thriller a completely acceptable life choice.

A USA Today bestseller, she writes for readers who feel the same way.

Her new book Dead Water is Book One of The Runaway Series. Because one catastrophic luxury charter was never going to be enough.