Nominated for a 2014 Edgar Award for Best Novel “You won’t be able to put [it] down.” — Ladies Home Journal   Lori Roy follows her Edgar® Award-winning debut novel, Bent Road, with a spellbinding tale of suspense set against the crumbling façade of a once-respectable Detroit neighborhood in 1958. The ladies of Alder Avenue—Grace, Julia, and Malina—struggle to care for one another amidst a city ripe with conflict, but life erupts when child-like Elizabeth disappears. A black woman was recently murdered at the factory where their husbands work, and the ladies fear that crime may foretell Elizabeth’s fate. When an unmistakable sound rings out, will the vicious secrets that bind them all be revealed? “Shocking . . . heartbreaking . . . In Lori Roy’s crime novel, tiny tremors in the life of late 1950s Detroit warn of the cataclysms to come.” – The New York Times Book Review    “You won’t be able to put [it] down.” – Ladies’ Home Journal   “Backtrack[s] into the past with thrilling results.” – Family Circle   “Rich . . . Lyrical . . . Roy delivers a timeless story that gives shape to those secrets and tragedies from which some people never recover.” –McClatchy-Tribune News Service   “Lori Roy has entered the arena of great American authors shared by Williams, Faulkner and Lee.” –BookReporter   “A tour-de-force of mood and suspense.” – Bookpage   “Outstanding. . . . Roy’s language pulses with so much subtle tension . . . exposing the characters’ true selves and their tragic secrets.” – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel   “Until She Comes Home  is a suspenseful, atmospheric work of crime fiction as well as a clear-eyed look at relationships between the sexes and the races in mid- 20th century America. . . . [S]ecrets — some born of fear, some of kindness, some of rage — power this mystery to a surprising and satisfying end.” – Tampa Bay Times   “Extraordinary. Compelling. And beautifully, quietly, disturbing. Everyone has a secret—and at every second, you fear something terrible is about to happen.  These gorgeously drawn characters and their mysteries will haunt you long after you turn the last page. Lori Roy is an incredible talent.” –Hank Phillippi Ryan, winner of the Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards   “Roy makes every detail count as she builds her characters and gently but inexorably leads them to reexamine their own lives.” – Booklist, starred review   “A beautifully written, at times lyrical, study of a disintegrating community.” – Kirkus, starred review   “Leaves readers guessing until the end.” – Library Journal   “A moody, tension-filled tale of intertwined crimes.” – Publishers Weekly   Lori Roy is the author of Bent Road , winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel; Until She Comes Home , finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; Let Me Die in His Footsteps , winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel; and most recently, The Disappearing . She lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with her family. CHAPTER ONE Malina Herze stares down on her dining-room table, her lovely dining-room table, and clutches a red-handled hammer to her chest. Her best linen, line dried and ironed this morning, still bears the round stains left by two water glasses. They sat on the table for almost four hours before Malina poured the tepid water down the drain. A highball glass still sits alongside her husband’s place setting, the ice melted and the drink inside ruined. On paydays, Mr. Herze likes a scotch and Vernors. That’s today. Payday. Every Wednesday of every week—the day he brings home the sweet, musky smell Malina has washed from his shirts for exactly one year. That must be why, at this late hour, Malina’s driveway stands empty. It’s been one year. An anniversary, of sorts. There’s no reason Mr. Herze should stray. Malina’s waistband is looser than the last time she wore this skirt, hangs lower on her sharp hipbones. She’s not one ounce heavier than she was twenty-five years ago when she and Mr. Herze wed. He was almost thirty then; she, seventeen. He liked her the way she was—thin and slight. Don’t go changing on me, he had said. And she hasn’t. She weighs not one ounce more. No reason for Mr. Herze to stray. No good reason. Walking from the dining room to the foyer, her white heels most probably denting the linoleum, Malina drops the hammer in her brown leather handbag, the largest of all her handbags. The tool, taken from the pegboard over Mr. Herze’s workbench, is rather heavy given its size. If called upon to defend herself with it, she may well have to use both hands. The women, Mr. Herze’s girl most certainly among them, come on payday when the men are sure to have money. They stand in the broken-out windows of the warehouse next door to the factory where all the men work. Most say the women are colored. Even now, Malina can imagine the smell of Mr. Herze’s girl as if it has come so many times into her home that it has seeped into the walls and the upholstery and the flocked drapes