Best Book of the Year Npr, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Library Journal, CrimeReads, LitReactor, Air Mail Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club PickAn Instant New York Times BestsellerNew York Times bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott's exquisite new novel, dark and juicy and tinged with horror (The New York Times Books Review), set against the hothouse of a family-run ballet studio. With their long necks, sheer tights, and taut buns, Dara and Marie Durant have only known the course of a well-bred dancer. Not much changes when their parents face death in a tragic accident. As Dara and Marie take over their mother's duty of running the Durant School of Dance, along with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student, the sisters perfect a fine dance, circling around one another, six days a week, keeping the studio thriving. But when another eerily suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker, a season of tense competition, provoked anxiety, and wild exhilaration, an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters' delicate balance.