NEED TO KNOW
\nElizabeth Arnott’s new novel, The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives, will be published in 2026The book follows a trio of women \u2014 whose husbands are convicted murderers \u2014 that team up to catch the person behind new killings in their California townRead an exclusive excerpt from the novel below<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Arnott has a killer new novel on the way.<\/p>\n
PEOPLE has an exclusive first look at the author\u2019s forthcoming novel The Secret Lives of Murderers\u2019 Wives<\/a>, out in early 2026 from Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House.<\/p>\n The book, set in California during the summer of 1966, follows Beverley, Elise and Margot: three housewives who also happen to be the spouses of convicted murderers. With their infamous exes away in prison (or dead), the three women try to move on with their lives, families and careers \u2014 and form an unlikely bond with one another.<\/p>\n But when a string of murders pop up in the area, the trio must reckon with their pasts and seek out the serial killer for themselves.\n<\/p>\n The cover of ‘The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives’ by Elizabeth Arnott.<\/p>\n Berkley<\/p>\n Arnott, who has authored acclaimed historical fiction under the pen name Lizzie Pook, returns to the genre with her latest book.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in the human psyche \u2014 particularly its darker corners \u2014 and have a long-standing fascination with true crime stories,\u201d the author tells PEOPLE. \u201cMore recently though, I\u2019ve felt a strong desire to know more about those left behind by violent crime; those people who are affected by the sins of others, quite often through no fault of their own \u2014 the parents, the children, the siblings, the wives, whose lives are upended by the acts of those in their orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to give them agency, I wanted to see what stories they could tell,\u201d Arnott continues. \u201cTo be able to introduce Beverley, Elsie and Margot to the world, and to share their complicated, messy lives with others feels like opening up my palm to show off a favorite treasure, desperately hoping others might love it just as I do. I\u2019m nervous and excited to see these women spread their wings.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Read an exclusive excerpt from The Secret Lives of Murderers\u2019 Wives<\/a> below.\n<\/p>\n Elizabeth Arnott.<\/p>\n \u00a0Dan Kennedy<\/p>\n Berryview, Calif., 1966<\/p>\n There\u2019s something about hot weather that makes Beverley Lightfoot think of finding her husband\u2019s clothes in the trash. It was sweltering, just like today, when she locked eyes with a skinny coyote, lifted the lid of her neighbor\u2019s garbage can and saw her husband\u2019s shirt \u2014 the plaid one she\u2019d got him for his 35th birthday \u2014 flecked with old eggshells, discarded coffee grounds and bloodstains.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n The PEOPLE App<\/a> is now available in the Apple App Store! Download it now for the most binge-worthy celeb content, exclusive video clips, astrology updates and more!<\/p>\n She blinks away the image, tilts the rearview mirror and splays her hands across the steering wheel, lifting her fingers to inspect nails she carefully painted just this morning, an innocuous carnation pink. She frowns, leans in, sure she can see the polish bubbling in the heat. The surrounding sidewalks are fringed with gasping palms and packed tightly with bodies in capri pants and sleeveless sweaters. This type of insistent heat \u2014 so stubborn that it radiates from the buildings, the crosswalks \u2014 sends folks\u2019 heads into a spin, especially in Berryview, where there is no coastal breeze, not even the mildest gust to shoo off the muggy stink of summer. Beverley adjusts her white sunglasses to repel the glare of the parking lot. She shifts in the driver\u2019s seat of her Cortina, her thighs tacky against the old vinyl. Her dress \u2014 cream twill, belted narrow at the waist, tied with a silk bow at the neck \u2014 is already damp with sweat. There\u2019s nothing she can do about it now; she only hopes the spotlights won\u2019t be too bright when she makes it inside. She checks her rearview mirror again. The sun is spiking through the trees, glancing off windows, a blazing wash of light. Her teeth find the soft insides of her cheeks and bite down hard. She resents the oafish predictability of her own memory, as if she\u2019s some dumb Pavlovian mutt thinking of helicopter blades and red flashing lights whenever the temperature rises above 90 degrees.\u00a0<\/p>\n She reaches forward and snaps off the car radio, then pulls the bow from her neck, purses her lips and blows a stream of hot air down to her chest. Twill. Really? In this heat? Bravo, Beverley. She\u2019d taken the dress from the back of the closet and had it dry-cleaned especially. Deciding on her outfit had been a ritual enacted over several days \u2014 hours in front of the mirror, holding each garment against her body to study it. She had to consider whether it struck the right balance. Nothing too stern. Nothing playful, for obvious reasons. Nothing short. No cleavage. Absolutely no red.\u00a0<\/p>\n She\u2019d layered on makeup before removing it bit by bit as if a sweep of blush in the wrong shade of peach or mascara applied too thickly was the thing people would focus on, the thing that would validate their hunch that they had been right about her all along. Outside the car window, a well-dressed crowd streams toward the entrance of the hotel. Silver badges and tenderly polished buttons glint in the sun. There are hundreds surging in: run-of=the-mill cops, detectives and sheriffs, and wives in their own uniform \u2014 pearls, skimmer dresses and earrings plump as Christmas tree baubles.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n Never miss a story \u2014 sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter<\/a> to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer\u200b\u200b, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.<\/p>\n Beverley glances down at her legs, sighs. There\u2019s a snag in her new pantyhose. She checks her makeup once more, dabs the sides of her mouth, reaches for the lipstick to reapply, unsure which is worse, the infernal heat or the infernal nerves. There will be people inside, important people, and they\u2019ll all be watching her, listening only to her, thinking to themselves, Of course she knew, or She didn\u2019t know? The woman\u2019s a floozy, a total waste of space. If there\u2019s one thing Beverley has learned over the past five years, it\u2019s that other women think they would know if their husband were out doing what Beverley\u2019s husband had been out doing. They wouldn\u2019t, but they like to comfort themselves with the notion just the same. Beverley has the grace to allow them that.<\/p>\n She glances at the double doors of the hotel. Her eyes linger on the sandwich board out front, with words scrawled in chalk.\u00a0<\/p>\n 3rd JULY LAPD GALA EVENING WELCOME OFFICERS AND THEIR FAMILIES<\/p>\n Hurriedly, she presses powder onto her face, trying to beat back the blush that crawls upward from her neck. If she doesn\u2019t go in now, she\u2019ll never go in. If she doesn\u2019t go in, they\u2019ll know it\u2019s because she\u2019s got something to hide.\u00a0<\/p>\n Excerpted from The Secret Lives of Murderers\u2019 Wives by Elizabeth Arnott Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Elizabeth Arnott. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.The Secret Lives of Murderers\u2019 Wives<\/a><\/p>\n will be published on March 3, 2026 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEED TO KNOW Elizabeth Arnott’s new novel, The Secret Lives of Murderers’ Wives, will be published in 2026The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[223,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-16402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It has been this way for weeks: a meteorological standoff, the papers running headlines of record temperatures alongside stories of planes bombing Hanoi. City Swelters! they cry hysterically. Thousands More Killed in \u2019Nam. Salesmen have taken the weather as a cue to knock on Beverley\u2019s door. They come with freestanding fans, with bulky Coleman coolers, with ice machines balanced on their hips, their damp hair palmed back, their grins twitching with the knowledge that they have access to treasure.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n