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Kimberly McCreight books in order

Kimberly McCreight is a New York Times bestselling author of young adult fiction.

The author of The Outliers Trilogy, Kimberly is a graduate of Vassar College and University of Pennsylvania Law School, graduating cum laude from the latter.

She worked for a number of years as a litigation associate at some of the leading law firms in New York City before ultimately making the switch to full-time writing.

A nominee of the Edgar, Anthony, and Alex Awards, several of her novels have been optioned for film, including Reconstructing Amelia (2013), A Good Marriage (2020), Friends Like These (2021), and The Outliers Trilogy.

Her work has been featured in notable publications including Antietam Review, Oxford Magazine, and Babble.

Kimberly lives in Brooklyn, New York.

More about Kimberly McCreight

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Young Adult

United States

Website: https://kimberlymccreight.com/

Non Series

  • Reconstructing Amelia (2013)
  • Where They Found Her (2015)
  • A Good Marriage (2020)
  • Friends Like These (2021)

Outliers

  1. The Outliers (2016)
  2. The Scattering (2017)
  3. The Collide (2018)

Detailed book overview

Non Series

Reconstructing Amelia

A single mother reconstructs her teenaged daughter Amelia’s tragic death, sifting through her emails, texts, and social media to piece together the shocking truth about the last days of her life.

Kate's in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career when she gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter’s exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter—now. But Kate’s stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance. By then it’s already too late for Amelia. And for Kate.

An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death. At least that’s the story Grace Hall tells Kate. And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe. Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn’t jump.

Author: Kimberly McCreight
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-0062225443
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Where They Found Her

Motherhood hasn’t been easy for Molly Sanderson, and the years since the loss of her second child have been a particular struggle. But six months after moving from New York City to sophisticated Ridgedale, New Jersey, she’s finally enjoying life again, as mother of a five-year-old daughter and fledgling arts reporter for the local paper. But this tenuous stability is threatened when the body of a newborn is found in the woods behind prestigious Ridgedale University and Molly is assigned the story. 

Over the objections of her increasingly concerned husband, Molly dives into reporting, determined to prove herself by uncovering the truth. What she finds is a decades-old trail of dark secrets that winds through every corner of the town.

Told from the perspectives of Molly; Barbara, wife of Ridgedale’s police chief, whose faltering son is unraveling her picture-perfect life; and a sixteen-year old high school dropout, Sandy, who is dealing with her wayward mother, Where They Found Her reveals that the tragic truth about what happened to the baby lies at the unexpected intersection of these three very different women’s lives. 

It is a taut and profoundly moving novel about mothers and daughters—the fierce bonds that unite them and the deceit that can drive them apart. But most of all it’s about the heartbreakingly high price of history. The past can be artfully denied, but never truly buried.

Author: Kimberly McCreight
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-0062225474
Publisher: Harper Perennial
A Good Marriage

Lizzie Kitsakis is working late when she gets the call. Grueling hours are standard at elite law firms like Young & Crane, but they’d be easier to swallow if Lizzie was there voluntarily. Until recently, she’d been a happily underpaid federal prosecutor. That job and her brilliant, devoted husband Sam—she had everything she’d ever wanted. And then, suddenly, it all fell apart.

No. That’s a lie. It wasn’t sudden, was it? Long ago the cracks in Lizzie’s marriage had started to show. She was just good at averting her eyes.

The last thing Lizzie needs right now is a call from an inmate at Rikers asking for help—even if Zach Grayson is an old friend. But Zach is desperate: his wife, Amanda, has been found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their Brooklyn brownstone. And Zach’s the primary suspect.

As Lizzie is drawn into the dark heart of idyllic Park Slope, she learns that Zach and Amanda weren’t what they seemed—and that their friends, a close-knit group of fellow parents at the exclusive Brooklyn Country Day school, might be protecting troubling secrets of their own. In the end, she’s left wondering not only whether her own marriage can be saved, but what it means to have a good marriage in the first place.

Author: Kimberly McCreight
First Release: 2020
ISBN: 978-0062367693
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Friends Like These

Six college friends have reunited for a glamorous weekend in the Catskills, a decade after a fatal accident that nearly destroyed them. Keith, once the ringleader of the group, was a handsome charmer on the fast track to success. Now he’s spiraling into addiction and stands at the edge of losing it all. This weekend is the last chance to save him.

But Keith, it turns out, is not the only one who needs saving.

By dawn on Sunday morning, a car has been found deep in the woods—one of the friends is dead, another is missing. When a local detective turns up to investigate, it’s clear the group is hiding something ominous.

Haunted by her sister’s murder years ago, Detective Julia Scutt has her own share of problems. But she’s a skilled detective, and knows a rehearsed story when she hears one. It is up to Julia to untangle a decade-long web of friendship, lies and betrayals to discover the truth. But first she needs to face her own past—including the secrets that could, in the end, offer the key to everything.

Author: Kimberly McCreight
First Release: 2021
ISBN: 978-0063061576
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks

Outliers

The Outliers

It all starts with a text: Please, Wylie, I need your help. Wylie hasn’t heard from Cassie in over a week, not since their last fight. But that doesn’t matter. Cassie’s in trouble, so Wylie decides to do what she has done so many times before: save her best friend from herself.

This time it’s different, though. Instead of telling Wylie where she is, Cassie sends cryptic clues. And instead of having Wylie come by herself, Jasper shows up saying Cassie sent him to help. Trusting the guy who sent Cassie off the rails doesn’t feel right, but Wylie has no choice but to ignore her gut instinct and go with him.

But figuring out where Cassie is goes from difficult to dangerous, fast. As Wylie and Jasper head farther and farther north into the dense woods of Maine, Wylie struggles to control her growing sense that something is really wrong. What isn’t Cassie telling them? And could finding her be only the beginning?

Author: Kimberly McCreight
First Release: 2016
ISBN: 978-0062359100
Publisher: HarperCollins
The Scattering

Wylie may have escaped the camp in Maine, but she is far from safe. The best way for her to protect herself is to understand her ability, fast. But after spending a lifetime trying to ignore her own feelings, giving in to her ability to read other peoples’ emotions is as difficult as it is dangerous.

And Wylie isn’t the only one at risk. Ever since they returned home, Jasper has been spiraling, wracked with guilt over what happened to Cassie. After all they’ve been through together, Wylie and Jasper would do anything for each other, but she doesn’t know if their bond is strong enough to overcome demons from the past.

It is amid this uncertainty and fear that Wylie finds herself confronted with a choice. She was willing to do whatever it took to help Cassie, but is she prepared to go to the same extremes to help complete strangers . . . even if they are just like her?

Author: Kimberly McCreight
First Release: 2017
ISBN: 978-0062359131
Publisher: HarperCollins
The Collide

KEEP YOUR ENEMIES CLOSE.

Wylie is finally out of the detention center, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe. As much as she wants to forget everything that's happened and return to her normal life, Wylie knows that true freedom means discovering, once and for all, who is hunting the girls who are Outliers—and why.

Armed with only a few clues and a handful of trusted allies, Wylie sets out to separate fact from fiction. But soon she is unearthing long-buried secrets and finds herself entangled in a conspiracy that is much bigger and more dangerous than she ever could have imagined. Worse yet, the nearer Wylie gets to discovering the truth, the closer her enemies get to silencing her and the other girls. This time, maybe forever.

Author: Kimberly McCreight
First Release: 2018
ISBN: 978-0062359162
Publisher: HarperCollins