Beautiful Animals — Lawrence Osborne

On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. Naomi, the daughter of a wealthy British art collector who has owned a villa in the exclusive hills for decades, convinces Sam, a younger American girl on vacation with her family, to help this stranger. As the two women learn more about the man and his past, their own burgeoning friendship takes a darker turn, and when a murder occurs on the island, a private investigator arrives and forces them to determine where their true loyalties lie.

In this atmospheric masterpiece, Osborne returns to the themes that made The Forgiven his breakout novel: the class tensions between wealthy white Europeans and the natives and immigrants who serve them, and the way a violent incident can cause reverberations both psychic and cultural that lay bare our own hypocrisies.