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How We Learned to Lie

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A voice-driven and explosive novel about friendship, love, and letting go, from the author of Little Wrecks

Violence in the small, suburban town of Highbone, Long Island, is escalating, and best friends Joan and Daisy are finding themselves in the center of it.

Joan has always been fascinated by the inner workings of living things: dogfish, eels, stingrays. But the more she sees of life outside her microscope, the more she realizes that people aren’t as easy to read as cells on a slide, and no one, not even Daisy, tells the truth.

Daisy’s always wished he had a family more like Joan’s, and that desire has only grown since his dad went to jail. But not even Joan can help Daisy keep his deadbeat older brother from putting everyone close to them in more danger.

When tragedy strikes too close to home, Joan and Daisy need each other more than ever. But no matter how hard they try, their secrets and lies have driven them apart. It’s only a matter of time before their friendship, just like their town, goes up in flames.

Sharp-edged and voice-driven, Meredith Miller’s How We Learned to Lie is a keenly observed story about friendship, violence, and life in a town on the brink.

376 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 2018

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About the author

Meredith Miller

8 books79 followers
I grew up in the suburbs of Long Island, in New York. I've lived all over America but these days I live and teach in Wales. I'm a published academic now writing fiction (and still a lot of critical stuff). I like to write novels featuring hard-boiled women. I also love language, sometimes to distraction.

I made this profile as an author, but I really enjoy being a reader here. I am happy to answer questions about my books, but also just to chat about whatever people are reading. I love nineteenth-century novels, geeky non-fiction and contemporary genre stuff, when it's well written.

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