A Sociopaths Guide to a Successful Marriage
By (Author) M. K. Oliver
HarperCollins Publishers
Hemlock Press
30th December 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Comical (humorous) crime and mystery
Psychological thriller
Paperback
384
Width 153mm, Height 234mm, Spine 24mm
270g
The darkly funny gripping new thriller introducing your new favourite murderous heroine: Lalla Rook.
'The most wildly entertaining novel you'll read this year: suspenseful but funny, shocking yet stylish and sophisticated, too a story with cold blood in its veins and bright ideas in its head' A. J. Finn
Lalla Rook is happily in possession of an adoring husband, two beautiful children, and a beautiful house. (Tick, tick, tick). Shes even stopped killing people (double tick). Or had, until she found an uninvited man snooping through her living room. Now she has a dead body to dispose of amidst the stress of hosting a 4-year-olds birthday party. But the show must go on you cant cancel key social events without difficult questions being asked, not even for an unidentified corpse in your front room.
Lalla cant pretend she hasnt missed the adrenaline rush that comes with murder. As a wife and mother shes necessarily an expert multi-tasker. So, burying a body, framing a friend and simultaneously assisting her daughter into a top school can be managed alongside the usual domestic minutiae. Its just that her husband Stephen seems distracted, her daughters drowning of the class hamster is affecting her prospects and then there is the unexpected reappearance of an old flame, a man she has already killed once, several years earlier. And, inconveniently, the police have chosen the worst possible time to be finally taking an interest in her.
'The most wildly entertaining novel you'll read this year: suspenseful but funny, shocking yet stylish and sophisticated, too a story with cold blood in its veins and bright ideas in its head' A. J. Finn
M K Oliver grew up in Liverpool as one of five children and went on to a degree in English Literature and Philosophy. He has spent most his career as an English teacher and Headteacher, working in a variety of schools in in London and the Southeast and is now dedicated to writing full time. He completed writing courses at CBC, Faber & Faber, Golden Egg Academy, and the Royal Court Theatre. He is married with two children, and raised his family in Muswell Hill, where this book is set. He is already at work on a second book featuring Lalla Rook.