‘This is a tale of murder. Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story …’ Read an excerpt from The Fury by Alex Michaelides
More about the book!

Penguin Random House has shared an excerpt from Alex Michaelides’s new thriller The Fury!

An exhilarating, gripping new psychological thriller from the author behind the record-breaking, multimillion-copy bestseller, The Silent Patient.

This is a tale of murder. Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it?

One spring morning, reclusive ex-movie star Lana Farrar invites a small group of her closest friends for a weekend away, on her small private island, just off the coast of Mykonos.

Beneath the surface, old friendships conceal violent passions and resentments. And in forty-eight hours, one of them will be dead. But that was just the beginning …

You may think you know this story. Think again.

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Read an excerpt:

Chapter One

This is a tale of murder.

Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it? The saddest kind of love story – about the end of love; the death of love.

So I guess I was right the first time.

You may think you know this story. You probably read about it at the time – the tabloids loved it, if you recall: ‘MURDER ISLAND’ was a popular headline. Unsurprising, really, as it had all the perfect ingredients for a press sensation: a reclusive ex-movie star, a private Greek island cut off by the wind … and, of course, a murder.

There was a lot of rubbish written about that night. All kinds of wild, inaccurate theories about what may or may not have taken place. I avoided all of it. I had no interest in reading misinformed speculation about what might have happened on the island.

I knew what happened. I was there.

Who am I? Well, I am the narrator of this tale – and also a character in it.

There were seven of us, in all, trapped on the island.

One of us was a murderer.

But before you start laying bets on which of us did it, I feel duty-bound to inform you that this is not a whodunnit. Thanks to Agatha Christie, we all know how this kind of story is meant to play out: a baffling crime, followed by dogged investigation, an ingenious solution – then, if you’re lucky, a twist in the tail. But this is a true story, not a work of fiction. It’s about real people, in a real place. If anything, it’s a whydunnit – a character study, an examination of who we are, and why we do the things we do.

What follows is my sincere and heartfelt attempt to reconstruct the events of that terrible night – the murder itself, and everything that led up to it. I pledge to present you with the plain unvarnished truth – or as near to it as I can get. Everything we did, said and thought.

But how? I hear you ask. How is it possible? How can I possibly know it all? Not just every action taken, everything said and done – but everything undone, unsaid, all the private thoughts in each other’s minds?

For the most part, I am relying on the conversations we had, before the murder, and afterwards – those of us who survived, that is. As for the dead, I trust you’ll grant me artistic licence regarding their interior life. Given I am a playwright by trade, I am perhaps better qualified than most for this particular task.

My account is also based on my notes – taken both before and after the murder. A word of explanation regarding this. I have been in the habit of keeping notebooks for some years now. I wouldn’t call them diaries, they’re not as structured as that. Just a record of my thoughts, ideas, dreams, snatches of conversations I overhear, my observations of the world. The notebooks themselves are nothing fancy, just plain black Moleskines. I have the relevant notebook from that year open now, by my side – and will no doubt consult it as we proceed.