"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. It is the type of novel writers admire and readers long for." -Jason Mott, author of The Returned Brett has been in love with her husband, Charlie, from the day she laid eyes on him in college. When he is found murdered, Brett is devastated. But if she is honest with herself, their marriage had been hanging by a thread for quite some time. All clues point to Charlie's mentally ill brother, Eli, but any number of people might have been driven to kill Charlie--a handsome, charismatic man who unwittingly damaged almost every life he touched. Brett is determined to understand how such a tragedy could have happened--and whether she was somehow complicit. Set in the desolate autumn beauty of Cape Cod, this riveting emotional puzzle explores the psyche of a woman facing down the meaning of love and loyalty. "Brilliant rendering of love story and murder mystery . . . 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 "A moody murder mystery . . . Boasts lovely, understated writing, sharply drawn settings . . . and, once again, characters who are irresistibly attractive, flawed, and dangerous . . . A fine literary whodunit from an accomplished storyteller." -Kirkus Reviews When Brett's charismatic husband Charlie is murdered, she is determinded to find out who is to blame. 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. Nina de Gramont is the author of the story collection Of Cats and Men, which was a Book Sense selection and won a Discovery Award from the New England Booksellers Association. Her first novel, Gossip of the Starlings, was also a Book Sense pick. She is the coeditor of an anthology called Choice and the author of several young adult novels. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington. Find her at www.ninadegramont.com. 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 ...