When wealthy Hamptons mothers start to vanish without a trace, the remaining mothers realize something has gone very wrong in their perfect neighborhood. 

Evelyn Allen never asked to live in the Hamptons. She didn’t grow up as part of the country club set and feels faintly appalled when her husband brags about his new luxury car. 

But when the stay-at-home order hits and her husband is deemed an “essential worker” by his billionaire boss, she’s invited to join a group chat called HOMEBOUND MOMS. As she gets to know the other mothers, she realizes that the veneer of wealth doesn’t protect them from feeling just as trapped as she does. As they start commiserating together, she finally starts to feel at home in the neighborhood she once resisted. 

Then one woman disappears. Then another. When the third woman goes missing, East Hampton hums with conspiracy theories as husbands panic, the police begin interrogating women, and a curfew is imposed to “keep mothers safe.” Everyone else suspects kidnapping or gruesome murder, but Evelyn can’t help but feel something—or someone—is pulling these women out of society. And what if she’s next?

Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA, and the author of the memoir Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, “In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love,” is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.