Illustration by Gwen Jamison Vogel
Twenty-five years ago, in Montclair, New Jersey, Anne walked into a bookstore for the launch of Christina’s second novel. We were both relatively new to town—Anne had just moved from Brooklyn; Christina was adjusting to suburban life after years on the Upper West Side. Within minutes, we discovered a creative kinship that would eventually lead us deep into the Adirondack wilderness, both literally and literarily.
From the start, our friendship was rooted in storytelling. We dissected films over coffee, analyzed novels on long walks, and spent countless hours untangling the psychology of characters we loved—and loved to loathe. When we discovered we were both pregnant—Christina with her third child, Anne with her first—it felt like another level of synchronicity in what was becoming a deeply collaborative relationship that would span decades.
Over the years, our creative partnership has taken various forms. We’ve coedited a book of essays, developed a pitch for a television series, and written articles together. But it wasn’t until we began mapping out Please Don’t Lie that we truly found our shared voice, distinct from our individual writing styles yet unmistakably ours.
The thriller genre was new territory for both of us. Christina, author of Orphan Train, The Exiles, and A Piece of the World, is known for historical fiction grounded in character and place. Anne’s debut novel, The Dig, explores psychological suspense through a literary lens. We discovered that our shared sensibilities merged into something unexpected: a voice agile enough to handle nuance and velocity, blending the emotional complexity we both gravitate toward and the relentless pacing thrillers demand.
What excited us most about writing Please Don’t Lie was the opportunity to explore questions that have fascinated us for years. How well do we really know the people closest to us? What lengths will we go to protect our secrets? And how do the stories we tell ourselves about the past shape the choices we make in the present?
Working together has been as revelatory as the writing itself. Characters surprised us. Plot twists emerged mid-conversation, unplanned and thrilling. Our collaborative voice, it turns out, is sharper and more propulsive than in our separate books, and unafraid to twist the knife. We pushed each other to dig deeper into the psychological complexity of each character while maintaining the relentless pace that keeps readers turning pages.
From the beginning, we knew the story belonged in the Adirondacks.
While Christina has a place in Maine and Anne has called the Berkshires home, both of us have spent meaningful time in the Adirondack Mountains. We wanted a setting that felt vivid and grounded, a place we could render with specificity but still imagine freely. The Adirondacks are both intimate and isolating, serene and threatening, a place where natural beauty masks real danger. With its vastness, isolation and sudden shifts in weather, the Adirondack wilderness doesn’t just form a backdrop; it actively shapes the psychology of the characters.
In a thriller, setting is never neutral. It’s an accelerant. And in the Adirondacks, the stakes are naturally high. Snow can fall in sheets; winds can reach 60 miles an hour. As any hiker knows, once you enter that landscape you can be just one wrong turn, or one badly sprained ankle, from real peril. We wanted to channel that unpredictability into the emotional atmosphere of the novel: the sense that danger is always one step behind you, just beyond the bend of the trail. That haunting contrast—between sublime beauty and the ever-present possibility of being lost or left behind—is what made the Adirondacks the perfect place to tell a story about trust, betrayal and survival.
Small mountain communities have their own unique dynamics. Everyone knows everyone, secrets are harder to keep, and the isolation can either bring people together or drive them apart. There’s something about being surrounded by wilderness that strips away pretense and forces people to confront who they really are.
We knew that the High Peaks region, with its wild beauty and isolation, offered the perfect backdrop for a story about fractured identities and hidden pasts. Our fictional town of Crystal River is just far enough from the beaten path to feel both familiar and uncanny. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows each other—until it turns out they don’t. We filled the town with secrets, tension and the kind of small-town intensity that lends itself perfectly to psychological suspense.
The two of us spent a week together in a remote Airbnb in upstate New York plotting the novel. The experience shaped both the physical and emotional terrain of Please Don’t Lie. Surrounded by pine forest, winding roads and silence broken only by the occasional snap of a branch, we could feel the story taking shape around us. (We often had to reassure ourselves that our combined presence surely made us immune to the dark fates we imagined for our characters!) Our protagonist, Hayley Stone, is a young woman recovering from loss, newly married, hoping to start fresh. But the further she settles into Crystal River, the more cracks appear—in her marriage, in her memories, and in the town itself.
Please Don’t Lie is the first novel in what we envision as a series of psychological thrillers set in Crystal River. We’re excited at the idea of exploring this fictional community over multiple books, peeling back layers of its history and revealing new secrets with each story. The Adirondacks provide the perfect backdrop for this kind of ongoing exploration: a landscape vast enough to hold many stories, secluded enough to trap our characters with their choices, and majestic enough to make readers want to return again and again.
We hope Please Don’t Lie draws readers into a place that feels as alluring and treacherous as the forest itself. Because the truth is, we all have secrets—and the mountains have a way of bringing them to light.
Christina Baker Kline and Anne Burt are the authors of Please Don’t Lie (Thomas & Mercer, 2025). Visit their websites at www.christinabakerkline.com and www.anneburtwriter.com.
