No Place Like Home

　　In a riveting thriller from the #1 bestselling Queen of Suspense, a young woman is ensnared into returning to the childhood home she wanted to leave behind forever - and where her hidden past emerges with a new and deadly twist.

　　Ten-year-old Liza Barton shoots her mother while trying to protect her from her violent husband - Liza's stepfather. While the death is ruled accidental, the tabloids still compare Liza to the child murderess Lizzie Borden.

　　Liza's adoptive parents change her name to Celia and try to erase all traces of her past. Widowed after a brief marriage in which she had a son, Jack, she remarries a young lawyer. Celia is happy until, on her birthday, he presents her with a gift - the house where she killed her mother. On moving in, they find the words LITTLE LIZZIE'S PLACE - BEWARE painted in red letters on the lawn. When the real estate agent who sold the house to her husband is murdered, she becomes a suspect. As she struggles to prove her innocence, Celia and her little son are being stalked by the killer.

Chapter One: Twenty-four Years Later

I cannot believe I am standing in the exact spot where I was standing when I killed my mother. I ask myself if this is part of a nightmare, or if it is really happening. In the beginning, after that terrible night, I had nightmares all the time. I spent a good part of my childhood drawing pictures of them for Dr. Moran, a psychologist in California, where I went to live after the trial. This room figured in many of those drawings.

The mirror over the fireplace is the same one my father chose when he restored the house. It is part of the wall, recessed and framed. In it, I see my reflection. My face is deadly pale. My eyes no longer seem dark blue, but black, reflecting all the terrible visions that are leaping through my mind.

The color of my eyes is a heritage from my father. My mothers eyes were lighter, a sapphire blue, picture perfect with her golden hair. My hair would be dark blond if I left it natural. I have darkened it, though, ever since I came back to the East Coast sixteen years ago to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan. I am also taller than my mother was by five inches. Yet, as I grow older, I believe I am beginning to resemble my mother in many ways, and I try to distance myself from that resemblance. I have always lived in dread of someone saying to me, ＂You look familiar...＂ At the time, my mothers image was splashed all over the media, and still turns up periodically in stories that rehash the circumstances of her death. So if anyone says I look familiar, I know its her they have in mind. I, Celia Foster Nolan, formerly Liza Barton, the child the tabloids dubbed ＂Little Lizzie Borden,＂ am far less likely to be recognized as that chubby-faced little girl with golden curls who was acquitted -- not exonerated -- of deliberately killing her mother and trying to kill her stepfather.