A Stranger in the House

The author of A Stranger in the House is Shari Lapena, a Toronto-based Canadian author of domestic mysteries and thrillers. Lapena worked as a lawyer and an English teacher before becoming a best-selling writer. As a writer of domestic thrillers, her novels often deal with tensions in relationships, secrets, and crime. All of these tropes are present in A Stranger in the House. One of her bestselling novels is The Couple Next Door (2016). Like A Stranger in the House, The Couple Next Door is a domestic thriller about a normal, wealthy suburban family whose lives are upended by a tragic event, in this case, the disappearance of a child. The story takes place in roughly the same setting as A Stranger in the House, a suburb in upstate New York.

Although the works are stand-alone thrillers, the crime in The Couple Next Door is investigated by the same detective who features in A Stranger in the House, Detective Rasbach. However, Shari Lapena has stated she will likely not be bringing back Detective Rasbach in future novels, although she has considered writing a stand-alone novel about his backstory. She has admitted that “I have so many people ask for a sequel to A Stranger in the House, that I’m starting to think maybe I could bring back some of those characters” (Kate Newton, “