A Stranger in My Grave [Paperback]

Young housewife Daisy Harker’s world is upended when a blank spot in her memory and a reoccurring nightmare link her to an unsolved murder and a decades-old conspiracy

Jim and Daisy Harker are a young, well-to-do couple in San Felice, California, and though childless they maintain the sort of domestic happiness that others can only aspire to. But a darkness exists at the outer edges of Daisy’s mind and she has no idea why it’s there. In a series of reoccurring nightmares she wanders a cemetery, eventually finding her own gravestone. According to the dream, December 2nd, 1955 is the day she died.  

Street smart but honorable, Stevens Pinata is a man with his own mysteries. An orphan left on a church doorstep as a child, he isn’t even certain of his ethnicity, let alone his goals in life. As a private investigator he works with bail bonds and quick shakedowns. But when a pretty young woman like Daisy Harker comes into his office with a crazy request to “find her lost day” he is intrigued. He is too decent to take advantage of a crazy woman, but Mr. Harker is a wealthy man and who is Pinata to turn down money?

What unfolds is a masterpiece of suspense and one of the books that forever changed the domestic thriller. Millar’s razor sharp prose cuts a masterful plot and slashes at the racism, sexism, and entitlement endemic to an era otherwise celebrated for its prosperity.PRAISE FOR MARGARET MILLAR

Mystery Writers of America Grand Master
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel
Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year

“One of the most original and vital voices in all of American crime fiction.”
—Laura Lippman
 
“I long ago changed my writing name to Ross Macdonald for obvious reasons.”
—Kenneth Millar (Ross Macdonald), in a letter to the Toronto Saturday Night newspaperls(