Best Book of the Year NPR • Wall Street Journal • Boston Globe • Library Journal • CrimeReads • LitReactor • Air Mail Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize - A TODAY Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick - An Instant New York Times Bestseller New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott's exquisite and disquieting new novel, “dark and juicy and tinged with horror” ( The New York Times Books Review ), set against the hothouse of a family-run ballet studio. With their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, Dara and Marie Durant have been dancers since they can remember. Growing up, they were homeschooled and trained by their glamorous mother, founder of the Durant School of Dance. After their parents' death in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago, the sisters began running the school together, along with Charlie, Dara's husband and once their mother's prized student. Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, sidelined from dancing after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around one another, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school's annual performance of The Nutcracker— a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration—an interloper arrives and threatens the sisters' delicate balance. Taut and unnerving, The Turnout is Megan Abbott at the height of her game. With uncanny insight and hypnotic writing, it is a sharp and strange dissection of family ties and sexuality, femininity and power, and a tale that is both alarming and irresistible. An Amazon Best Book of August 2021: Megan Abbott has made a name for herself by writing tight, dark novels about the spaces where women compete, and her latest, The Turnout , continues Abbott’s winning streak by tackling the world of ballet. Dara and Marie Durant are grown sisters who run their family’s ballet school, a school where they themselves learned the spoken and unspoken rules of dance. Marie trains the younger dancers, and Dara the older ones, while Dara’s husband, Charlie, a former student of the school himself, manages the administration. When an accident happens at the studio as they are beginning preparations for their yearly performance of The Nutcracker , a hyper-masculine contractor is brought in to repair the damage. Abbott’s prose is so corporeal and fraught with sexuality, you can almost smell the dancers’ sweat. The Turnout ’s pace builds like a pirouette, and I can promise you’ll never look at the Sugar Plum Fairy the same way again. —Sarah Gelman, Amazon Editor Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A finalist for: International Thriller Writers Award Housatonic Book Award Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize One of: TIME ’s 36 News Books You Need to Read This Summer Entertainment Weekly ’s Best Books of August Washington Post ’s Eight Thrillers and Mysteries to Read this Summer The Boston Globe 's Summer Reading 2021 Picks The Philadelphia Inquirer ’s Great New Books to Read in August Wall Street Journal ’s 11 Books to Read: The Best Reviews of August Oprah Daily ’s 33 Best Thrillers That’ll Keep You Turning the Page Vogue ’s Best Books to Read This Summer Real Simple ’s Up-All-Night Thrillers Harper’s Bazaar ’s 46 Books You Need to Read in 2021 Refinery29 ’s 38 Books You’ll Want to Read This Summer The A.V. Club ’s Four Hard-Hitting Crime Novels to Get You Through the End of Summer CNN 's 20 Most Anticipated New Books to Read This August New York Post ’s 30 Best Books on Our Summer Reading List in 2021 Seattle Times’ Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Insider 's 10 Best New Books to Read in August  Apartment Therapy ’s Must-read Book of the Month Adore Magazine ’s New Releases to Enjoy this Season Inside Hook ’s 10 Books You Should Be Reading This August Glitter Guide ’s 8 Books To Add To Your Reading List This August The Millions 's Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Lit Hub ’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021 Reader’s Digest 50 Best Fiction Books to Read This Year CrimeReads ’ Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2021 Publishers Weekly ’s Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2021: Mystery/Thriller BookPage ’s Most Anticipated Mysteries and Thrillers of 2021 BookRiot ’s 20 Must-Read Crime Novels to Keep You Up At Night Booktrib ’s Most Anticipated SheReads ’s Most Anticipated 2021 Summer Thrillers for your Beach Bag "Pulsing with suspense." – People , "Book of the Week" "Abbott's novels are often described as crime fiction, and, while indeed she works with mystery and suspense and draws on noir and Gothic tropes, her goal seems less to construct intricate, double-crossing plot problems than to explore the dark side of femininity....In other words, Megan Abbott is a mood." – The New York Times Book Review “Abbott is a lege