The Captives

Orange Is the New Black meets Gone Girl in this ingenious psychological thriller from Immergut (Private Property). Frank Lundquist, a counselor at the Milford Basin Correctional Facility, has just received a new patient, Miranda Greene, who is serving a 52-year sentence for second-degree murder. It’s an ethical dilemma for Frank, who immediately recognizes Miranda as the golden girl who, because he had a crush on her, haunted his high school years. But Miranda doesn’t seem to recognize Frank, and after she ends up in the hospital following a failed suicide attempt, Frank hatches a daring scheme to help his former classmate. What follows is a prolonged sequence filled with suspense and irony. Told in alternating chapters from Frank and Miranda’s points of view, Immergut burrows inside the heads of her two main characters to dramatize their distinctive pathologies. She also expertly crafts the other characters in the story, including Frank’s younger junkie brother, Clyde, and several of Miranda’s fellow inmates, who all play an important part in the story’s surprising denouement. Immergut’s book begins as in incisive psychological portrait of two mismatched individuals and morphs into a nail-biting thriller. (June)