Bryn Greenwood

Today’s the day! My 5th novel, Nobody Knows You’re Here is out today in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Beatrice is about to lose everything when a kind stranger offers her a cup of coffee and a job. It seems like a promise of a better life . . . until she wakes up under lock and key in an isolated mansion in the woods.

On orders from a shadowy criminal organization, armed jailers make the rules for their captives, enforcing them with unflinching violence. Beatrice has always been a “nice girl,” but that won’t save her now. Nobody helped her when she lost her job, her car, and her home, and nobody’s coming to give back her freedom. The only person she can rely on is herself. And now, several child hostages are relying on her too.

Well I was planning to post about a different book today, but surprise! Amazon has posted the cover of my new book already, so here it is. Nobody Knows You’re Here, my first foray into the thriller genre, is coming September 16, 2025.

A desperate woman fights to escape captivity in this gripping thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.

Beatrice is about to lose everything when a kind stranger offers her a cup of coffee and a job. It seems like a promise of a better life . . . until she wakes up under lock and key in an isolated mansion in the woods.

On orders from a shadowy criminal organization, armed jailers make the rules for their captives, enforcing them with unflinching violence. Beatrice has always been a “nice girl,” but that won’t save her now. Nobody helped her when she lost her job, her car, and her home, and nobody’s coming to give back her freedom. The only person she can rely on is herself. And now, several child hostages are relying on her too.

As we’re all taking stock of the things this Republican administration is destroying, here’s another childhood book that was a big deal to me. When I was in 8th grade, my English teacher was Mrs. Aletha Moon. Mrs. Moon was one of only half a dozen Black people in my tiny hometown. Although my grandad was friends with Mr. Moon, most of my family were your standard issue western small town polite racists. The kind of people who would never use racial slurs to people’s faces, but were completely comfortable saying racist things in private. At that time (1984), there was a lot of talk in my community about how bad affirmative action was.

In 8th grade English class that year we were required to write one of our first formal research essays. It wasn’t terribly rigorous stuff, but we were required to consult some sources and cite them. I wrote about affirmative action. Because all I’d ever heard about it were negative things, my little essay was pretty negative about it.

When I got it back, I’d received a B+ and among the marginal comments was this note: “I’m disappointed that your essay is so poorly reasoned. I had come to expect more from you.” It was the harshest thing any teacher had ever written on an assignment and I went to Mrs. Moon to see what I could do to bring my grade up to an A. (I wasn’t allowed to get anything but A’s, and sincerely, disappointing the smartest teacher I’d ever had was a real gut punch.)

Mrs. Moon offered me this extra credit: I could read Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man and write an essay about it. Not a research essay but a simple reaction essay. I do not remember what I wrote, but I remember exactly how I felt reading this book. I knew that one of my very distant great-grandmothers had been a Black woman* who had sued for her freedom, but nobody in my family really talked about that. At 13, I’d lived as a white child in a town that was almost entirely white, and I had no idea exactly how cruel the world I lived in was toward Black people. “Eye-opening” doesn’t begin to cover it.

I remain very grateful to Mrs. Moon for correcting my path in life. Without her, perhaps I would have grown up to be a Republican. Perhaps I would be looking on at the horrors being unleashed while feeling perfectly comfortable in my white skin.

Sept 16th.

Little Fur Family was the second book I learned to read, so no surprise it is indelibly marked in my brain. It’s about … a little fur family. The story doesn’t tell us exactly what kind of creatures they are, so we are welcome to believe they are some wholly unknown thing. They live in little tree stumps and wear clothes and have the usual personal relationships that humans have. This is my favorite page from the book, when the little fur child goes to visit his grandfather, who is a gruff old fur man. I’m sure I loved it best, because I loved my old gruff grandad.

The thing that strikes me most in learning about the horrible things he has likely done is how they seem to align with other aspects of my life.

Like so many people, I first got into Gaiman in college with the Sandman comics. In fact my entire friend group was really into them.

As the years passed, one by one, I learned terrible things about those college friends.

The least awful of them turned out to be a Trumper. Another turned out to be a plagiarist. Yet another was revealed to be an embezzler, and a fourth is a serial adulterer, betraying every partner they’ve ever had.

The nadir of that friend group was convicted of molesting his own children.

Looking back at those friends, it seems almost natural that I also greatly admired a writer who did cruel, ugly things.

My mother was an emotionally abusive (or neglectful depending on her mood) narcissist, and it became clear to me in adulthood that this had marked me in some way that allowed other abusive people to identify me as a likely target.

Since I’ve covered all my dogs, I feel I should hop in the way-back machine and introduce my cats as well. All I wanted was a cat. Any cat. My then-husband, however, insisted that he was allergic to cats. Rather than give up, I started researching hypoallergenic cat breeds. Now sphynx cats are not hypoallergenic, but with regular bathing their dander levels can be kept low enough that it won’t aggravate people who are allergic to cats. So we got these cats from a breeder in New Orleans. Flanny was considered a show quality cat, both in color (blue mink) and hairlessness, while Sippy was considered pet quality, because a solid black cat with some hair was considered less desirable. So one was expensive and the other was really expensive.