The Women in White A Novel

By: Sarah Pekkanen

Published by St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2026-08-04

In the new thriller from #1 New York Times Bestseller Sarah Pekkanen, a young divorcee accepts a caretaker job for an elderly widow and is drawn into a decades-old mystery of four college girls who vanished after volunteering for parapsychology experiments.

When Riley Bell lands a caretaker job for Betty Sadler, she imagines quiet afternoons of tea and card games - and a chance to heal from her shattering divorce. Instead, she steps into a house that feels suspended in time, with every lampshade, cocktail coupe and record album exactly as it was in 1964. No television. No microwave. And Betty has never even heard of a cell phone.

For Betty, there’s only one thing left she wants in life: To locate her three best friends who seemingly disappeared after they all volunteered for mysterious experiments in their college’s psychology department. No clues, no contact, just an unanswered mystery that has shadowed Betty for six decades.

Inspired by the real-life research once conducted at Duke University’s Parapsychology Laboratory, The Women In White is told in dual timelines- Betty’s sparkling world of pep rallies and 5 o’clock martinis, and Riley’s present-day search through hidden files into dark corners.

Because whatever was swirling around these four exceptional young women is rising from its long-dormant state. Someone is resurrecting the old experiments, like a copy-cat serial killer. And Riley's efforts to get answers about the lost girls from the 1960s is putting her on a collision course with the person determined to finish the job.