Set against the desolate autumn beauty of Cape Cod, The Last September is a riveting emotional puzzle that takes readers inside the psyche of a woman facing the meaning of love and loyalty. Brett has been in love with Charlie ever since he took her skiing on a lovely Colorado night fourteen years ago. And now, living in a seaside cottage on Cape Cod with their young daughter, it looks as if they have settled into the life they desired. However, Brett and Charlie’s marriage has been tenuous for quite some time. When Charlie’s unstable younger brother plans to move in with them, the tension simmering under the surface of their marriage boils over. But what happened to Charlie next was unfathomable. Charlie was the golden boy so charismatic that he charmed everyone who crossed his path; who never shied away from a challenge; who saw life as one big adventure; who could always rescue his troubled brother, no matter how unpredictable the situation. So who is to blame for the tragic turn of events? And why does Brett feel responsible?   “The type of novel writers admire and readers long for.”* “Convincing and suspenseful . . . precise and poignant in its depiction of human nature in dire distress.” —Sheila Kohler, author of Dreaming for Freud “That rare coming of age novel that deals with adults, who actually do come of age in the most difficult ways. I was hooked by the first paragraph, which somehow contains all the beautiful, luminous grief of the whole story, and I truly did not want to let it go in the end.” —Brad Watson, author of Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives “ The Last September is a wonderful, glowing book populated  by characters that become a part of your life long after the last page has been turned.”—*Jason Mott, author of The Returned “An emotionally intense study of how a transcendent love becomes a fraying marriage . . . [with] characters who are irresistibly attractive, flawed, and dangerous . . . A fine literary whodunit from an accomplished storyteller.” — Kirkus Reviews Praise for Gossip of the Starlings “De Gramont’s debut novel is the kind of smart and riveting read the fans of a certain kind of campus drama—think Donna Tartt’s The Secret History —will devour.” — People “A transfixing debut.” — The Washington Post “Stunning . . . I inhaled this novel in one breath.” — Jacquelyn Mitchard 1 Because I am a student of literature, I will start my story on the day Charlie died. In other words, I’m beginning in the middle. In medias res, that’s the Latin term, and though my specialty is American Renaissance poetry, I did have to study the classics. Homer, Dante, Milton. They knew about the middle, how all of life revolves around a single moment in time. Everything that comes before leads up to that moment. Everything that comes afterward springs from that moment. In my case, that moment--that middle--is my husband’s murder. WHEN I LOOK BACK NOW, it hurtles toward us like a meteor. But at the time we were too wrapped up in our day-­to-­day life to see it. Charlie and I lived in a borrowed house by the ocean. Our daughter, Sarah, was fifteen months old. September had just arrived, emptying the beaches at the very moment they became most spectacular: matte autumn sunlight and burnished eel grass. Cape Cod Bay was dark enough to welcome back seals but warm enough for swimming, at least if you were Charlie. He made a point of swimming in the ocean at least one day every month, including December, January, and February. I used to joke that he was part dolphin. But this was late summer, and unseasonably warm. You didn’t need to be a dolphin to go swimming, and on Charlie’s last day he had already been in the water by the time Sarah woke up from her morning nap. At eleven thirty, he carried her into the extra bedroom I used as a study. If I’d run my hand through his hair, I would have felt the leftover grit of salt water. But I didn’t run my hand through his hair because I was too angry. I was generally angry at Charlie that fall, and it didn’t help, his tendency to wander into the room where he knew I was trying to work. Sarah still wore nothing but a diaper, and obviously not a clean one. Between jobs since his restaurant failed, Charlie had spent the morning working on reshingling the house, which belonged to his father. Like Sarah, he was half naked; he wore khaki shorts and no shirt. Ignoring my pointed glance, he lay down on the worn, woven rug, crossing his long legs at the ankles. His curly blond head rested on his hands with his elbows pointing toward the ceiling. Sarah squatted about six inches away, her gaze focused on her father, concentrating in that intense toddler way—almost as if she knew these hours constituted her last chance to see him alive. Remembering that look, I like to think of Charlie’s face imprinting itself on her subconscious, the memory as intrinsic as the strands of his DNA. Sarah was a thoughtful child who already had a