INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
What if the childhood you remember isn’t really what happened at all?
“A gripping story of troubled relationships, mental illness, and buried secrets with a murder at its heart. . . . Clever, twisty, and chilling." —Shari Lapena, #1 bestselling author of Everyone Here is Lying
From the acclaimed author of An Unthinkable Thing and Hideaway, a breath-stopping novel of suspense about a woman tormented by memories of the past and threatened by long-held secrets in the present.

Molly Wynters has moved back to her small hometown to care for her father, recently felled by a stroke and no longer able to communicate. She is ready to make a fresh start with her son after her divorce, but is haunted by both old events and new realities in her childhood home.

What Molly recalls of her young life with her father is full of love and care, even though a violent trauma defined her childhood: when she was a young girl, she witnessed her mother’s murder, and her testimony—“There was a man downstairs”—sent a teenager to prison. This tragic episode is still very much alive in the culture of the town, and the more Molly remembers, the more she fears that what she said on the stand all those years ago might not have been the whole truth.

After Molly, a trained therapist, volunteers for a local helpline, the threats begin. At first they seem random, but soon Molly realizes that she is a target, and even those closest to her seem suspicious, especially as unsuspected links between them emerge. More than one life was destroyed on that horrific long-ago day, and now someone intends to hold Molly accountable.

With its gripping descent into the shadowy corners of the human psyche, A Man Downstairs is both an edge-of-your-seat thrill ride and a masterful exploration of the fragile nature of memory.

Nicole grew up in Upper Gul­lies, New­found­land, with her five sib­lings and par­ents, John and Nancy Lun­dri­gan. She attended Queen Eliz­a­beth Regional High School in nearby Fox­trap. Dur­ing her final year at QERHS, she enjoyed a semes­ter of school in Amiens, France where she lived with a Baron and Baroness in the Chateau de Prouzel.

After high school, Nicole moved to Fred­er­ic­ton, and earned a BSc from the Uni­ver­sity of New Brunswick. The sum­mer after grad­u­a­tion, she resided in the small com­mu­nity of Morawhanna, Guyana, where she helped to rebuild a school­house, vol­un­teered with a doc­tor bring­ing health­care to remote vil­lages, and assisted in a sea tur­tle con­ser­va­tion pro­gram on Shell Beach. Upon return­ing to Canada, Nicole attended Saint Mary’s Uni­ver­sity (Hal­i­fax) and received a BA (hon­ours) in anthro­pol­ogy. Dur­ing her time in Hal­i­fax, she worked on an archae­o­log­i­cal dig which involved the removal and analy­sis of skele­tal remains beneath the Lit­tle Dutch Church. In 1996, she moved to Ontario, and com­pleted an MSc from the Uni­ver­sity of Toronto with a focus on phys­i­cal anthro­pol­ogy. Her main area of inter­est was under­stand­ing the con­di­tions affect­ing the degra­da­tion of DNA in post­mortem skele­tal remains.

Shortly after grad­u­a­tion, she began free­lance writ­ing and her work has appeared in a vari­ety of pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Reader’s Digest, Moth­er­ing: The Nat­ural Fam­ily Liv­ing Mag­a­zine, Law and Order: Police Man­age­ment, and the Hal­i­fax Daily Her­ald. She is the author of four nov­els: Unrav­el­ing Arva, Thaw, The Seary Line, and Glass Boys. Her lit­er­ary fic­tion has been selected as a top ten pick by Canada’s national news­pa­per the Globe and Mail, was long-listed for the Relit Award, and given hon­ourable men­tion for the Sun­burst Award.

She resides in Ontario with her hus­band and three children.

Nicole Lundrigan's profile page

“A gripping story of troubled relationships, mental illness and buried secrets with a murder at its heart—who really killed young mother Edie Wynters in the small town of Aymes almost forty years ago? Her now grown daughter is about to find out. . . . A Man Downstairs is a clever, twisty and chilling read."
—Shari Lapena, international bestselling author of Everyone Here is Lying
"A sharply observed, layered mystery about obsession, desperation, and the dark secrets small towns keep to protect their own.”
—Robyn Harding, bestselling author of The Drowning Woman
"Combining sharp, assured prose with boundless humanity, this deftly plotted novel is a triumph. I stayed up all night racing toward a conclusion that provided more than just the deep satisfaction of a whodunit solved—it gave me chills, and made me think. Now all I want is another Nicole Lundrigan novel to become addicted to!"
—Marissa Stapley, New York Times bestselling author of Lucky
"Lundrigan is that rare breed of thriller writer who can weave a cunning plot twist while mesmerizing us all with her language. A Man Downstairs is a taut psychological nightmare with a poet's soul."
—Roz Nay, bestselling author of Our Little Secret and The Hunted
"A dark, disturbing drama suffused with gritty suspense, A MAN DOWNSTAIRS is gorgeously written. With astute and terrifying insights into the human condition, Nicole Lundrigan expertly weaves a gripping tale about fractured relationships and the secrets swirling around a small community, rocked by a decades-old murder. The multiple POVs are mesmerizing and the prose is poetic in this intensely captivating and unforgettable read."
—Samantha M. Bailey, USA Today and #1 national bestselling author of A Friend in the Dark

“Lundrigan has a strong command of character and pace, and she is adept at keeping the screws of her tale tightening as she moves [A Man Downstairs] inexorably toward its climax.”
—Toronto Star