The Pact ─ A Love Story

Until the phone calls came at three o'clock on a November morning, the Golds and their neighbors, the Hartes, had been inseparable. It was no surprise to anyone when their teenage children, Chris and Emily, began showing signs that their relationship was moving beyond that of lifelong friends. But now seventeen-year-old Emily is dead—shot with a gun her beloved and devoted Chris pilfered from his father's cabinet as part of an apparent suicide pact—leaving two devastated families stranded in the dark and dense predawn, desperate for answers about an unthinkable act and the children they never really knew.

From New York Times bestselling author Jodi Picoult—one of the most powerful writers in contemporary fiction—comes a riveting, timely, heartbreaking, and terrifying novel of families in anguish and friendships ripped apart by inconceivable violence.

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of sixteen novels, including Keeping Faith, Vanishing Acts, The Tenth Circle, Nineteen Minutes, Change of Heart, and Handle with Care. She received the 2003 New England Book Award for fiction and was the recipient of the ALA's Alex Award for her novel My Sister's Keeper. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children.