- Arts & Crafts
- Fitness and Health
- Outdoor Recreation
- Biography & Memoir
- Business
- History
- All Nonfiction
- See all
Recently dumped and stuck with the mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn down the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the deliriously wealthy Naomi Duncan. The scrapbooks, a secret birthday gift for Naomi's husband, Bryce, trace the Duncans' twenty-five-year marriage. The conditions: Esther must include every piece of paper she's been sent, must sign an NDA, and must only contact Naomi using the burner phone provided. Otherwise, she'll spoil the surprise.
As Esther binges true-crime podcasts and works through the nearly two hundred boxes of Duncan detritus, she finds herself infatuated with the gilded family—until, midproject, Naomi dies suspiciously. When Esther becomes convinced the husband killed her, she uses the scrapbooks' trove of information to insert herself into the Duncans' lives to prove it. But the more Esther investigates, the further she is dragged back to the scorched earth of her own past in the art world.
Laced with pitch-black humor and conspiratorial unease, Scrap is a razor-sharp examination of wealth and power, art and truth, of the line between justice and revenge—and who gets to cross it.
"[A] black comedy that revels in the fabulously entertaining dysfunction at the heart of the world's disgustingly wealthy ... Henkel's lacerating eye for the morally ambiguous keeps you hooked."—Daily Mail
-
Creators
-
Publisher
-
Release date
August 27, 2024 -
Formats
-
OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9798894861166
- File size: 284257 KB
- Duration: 09:52:11
-
-
Languages
- English
-
Reviews
-
Publisher's Weekly
June 10, 2024
Henkle’s overstuffed latest (after Other People’s Clothes) centers on a scrapbook artist investigating the death of her client. Esther Ray returns home to North Carolina after a vacation and discovers that her girlfriend has left her. Now solely responsible for her mortgage payments, Esther takes a job with the wealthy Naomi Duncan, who asks her to bind documents and family photos into scrapbooks as a birthday gift for Naomi’s husband, Bryce. From the beginning, Naomi is dodgy about the job, forcing Esther to sign a five-page NDA and only communicate with her via a burner phone. As Esther trawls through the documents, she grows obsessed with Naomi and Bryce’s glamorous life, though she notices hints of darkness around its edges. After Naomi dies in an apparent skiing accident, Esther gradually comes to suspect that Bryce may have killed her. In one flashback after another, Henkle details Esther’s childhood traumas, her obsession with true crime podcasts, and the unhinged intensity that has gotten her fired from previous jobs. Under the weight of all this exposition, the novel wobbles on the way toward its outlandish conclusion. Despite an intriguing setup, this falls short. Agent: Eleanor Birne, PEW Literary.
-
Loading
Why is availability limited?
×Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. You can still place a hold on the title, and your hold will be automatically filled as soon as the title is available again.
The Kindle Book format for this title is not supported on:
×Read-along ebook
×The OverDrive Read format of this ebook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.