The New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Lies and Fragile returns to The Hollows in a thriller that explores matters of faith, memory, and sacrifice. “Will have you racing to the last page.”—Michael Connelly After giving up his post at the Hollows Police Department, Jones Cooper is at loose ends. He is having trouble facing a horrible event from his past and finding a second act. He’s in therapy. Then, on a brisk October morning, he has a visitor. Eloise Montgomery, the psychic who plays a key role in Fragile, comes to him with predictions about his future, some of them dire. Michael Holt, a young man who grew up in The Hollows, has returned looking for answers about his mother, who went missing many years earlier. He has hired local PI Ray Muldune and psychic Eloise Montgomery to help him solve the mystery that has haunted him. What he finds might be his undoing. Fifteen-year-old Willow Graves is exiled to The Hollows from Manhattan when six months earlier she moved to the quiet town with her novelist mother after a bitter divorce. Willow is acting out, spending time with kids that bring out the worst in her. And when things get hard, she has a tendency to run away—a predilection that might lead her to dark places. Set in The Hollows, the backdrop for Fragile, this is the riveting story of lives set on a collision course with devastating consequences. “ Darkness, My Old Friend is deeply plotted and complex and carries an undeniable momentum. Lisa Unger’s enthralling cast of characters pulled me right in and locked me down tight. This is one book that will have you racing to the last page, only to have you wishing the ride wasn’t over.” —Michael Connelly “Lisa Unger is one of my favorite authors. She gets better and better with each book.” —Karin Slaughter, New York Times Bestselling author of Fallen “A satisfying story with an eclectic and interesting cast of characters and believable dialogue. Unger shows her usual deftness at intricate plotting and explores the mother-child relationship from multiple angles. . . . Sure to be another hit with Unger fans.” — Kirkus Reviews “The beauty of this unconventional crime novel is that focus is not on whodunit but the darkness that drives us.” — Family Circle “One of Unger’s best thrillers yet.” — Library Journal (starred review) “Good reading, canny characterizations.” — The Plain Dealer “Unger skillfully pulls together various stories in an exciting and logical way. Darkness, My Old Friend moves at a brisk pace as Unger makes us desperately want to know what drives these various characters.” — South Florida Sun Sentinel Lisa Unger is an award-winning  New York Times  and internationally bestselling author, published in 26 languages worldwide.  Chapter One Jones Cooper feared death. The dread of it woke him in the night, sat him bolt upright and drew all the breath from his lungs, narrowed his esophagus, had him rasping in the dark. It turned all the normal shadows of the bedroom that he shared with wife into a legion of ghouls and intruders waiting with silent and malicious intent. When? How? Heart attack. Cancer. Freak accident. Would it come for him quickly? Would it slowly waste and dehumanize him? What, if anything, would await him? He was not a man of faith. Nor was he a man without stain on his conscience. He did not believe in a benevolent universe of light and love. He could not lean upon those crutches as so many did; everyone, it seemed, had some way to protect himself against the specter of his certain end. Everyone except him. His wife, Maggie, had grown tired of the 2:00 a.m. terrors. At first she was beside him, comforting him: Just breathe, Jones. Relax. It’s okay. But even she, ever-patient shrink that she was, had started sleeping in the guest room or on the couch, even sometimes in their son’s room, empty since Ricky had left for Georgetown in September. His wife believed it had something to do with Ricky’s leaving. “A child heading off for college is a milestone. It’s natural to reflect on the passing of your life,” she’d said. Maggie seemed to think that the acknowledgment of one’s mortality was a rite of passage, something everyone went through. “But there’s a point, Jones, where reflection becomes self-indulgent, even self-destructive. Surely you see that spending your life fearing death is a death in and of itself.” But it seemed to him that people didn’t reflect on death at all. Everyone appeared to be walking around oblivious to the looming end—spending hours on Facebook, talking on cell phones while driving through Starbucks, reclining on the couch for hours watching some mindless crap on television. People were not paying attention—not to life, not to death, not to one another. “Lighten up, honey. Really.” Those were the last words she’d said to him this morning before she headed off to see her first patient. He was trying to lighten up. He really was. Jones was raking leaves; th