Saltwater

Praise

“Old money, high drama, and dark secrets—what’s not to love? This is a riveting, atmospheric, elegantly written, and twist-packed tale. . . . Brilliant!”—Ellery Lloyd, New York Times bestselling author of The Club

“Engrossing and sinister, Katy Hays’s second book, Saltwater, has all the elements thriller readers love: dead bodies, deception, and betrayal. But at its core, this multilayered story delves into the concepts of familial loyalty and generational trauma, making Saltwater a must-read for 2025.”—Julie Clark, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight

“Saltwater is a masterful, riveting, and unsettling tale of privilege, greed, and lust. The Lingates are masters at protecting their own interests, until their polished veneer begins to tarnish on the beautiful but vicious island of Capri. I can’t remember reading a book with as many deftly executed twists and revelations as Saltwater—I devoured it in what felt like seconds.”—Ella Berman, author of Reese’s Book Club pick Before We Were Innocent

“A magnificent, seductive story about the double-edged sword of wealth, set on the island of Capri, a place so dazzling and remote it might as well be another member of the Lingate family . . .  Saltwater is ‘quiet luxury’ in book form, the truest literary successor to HBO’s Succession I’ve encountered. Hays’s observations about wealth’s corrosive effects are so shrewd, her insights so incisive, that this book could qualify as an anthropological study if it wasn’t so clearly a bold, top-notch thriller. In fact, Saltwater is so gorgeously written that its twists didn’t need to hit nearly so hard nor land nearly so perfectly for this to already be one of the best books of 2025, and yet they do. What a knockout.”—Ashley Winstead, bestselling author of Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

“The Lingates have it all: prestige, power and the potential to be irrevocably destroyed if long-buried secrets get into the wrong hands. Katy Hays’s Saltwater is sultry and sophisticated, with a menacing undercurrent that keeps you thrillingly unsettled until its final spellbinding twist. Let the languid glamour of Capri gently take you by one hand, an ice-cold Negroni in the other, but watch your step—the cliffs are treacherous, and so too is a family with everything to lose.”—Rachel Koller Croft, author of Stone Cold Fox

“Brilliantly written in scintillating prose, Katy Hays’s Saltwater is an Italian opera for the modern age in which a daughter of fortune desperate to escape her monstrous family digs up the skeletons of the past, setting off a serpentine chain reaction that will leave you breathless. Superbly plotted and deftly executed, this searing takedown of the upper crust is one to savor.”—Katherine Wood, author of Ladykiller

“A twisty, seductive thriller.”—Nina Simon, New York Times bestselling author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night