The Silent Tenant — a Novel

The most unsettling tenant isn’t the one who makes noise. It’s the one who makes none at all.Amelia Vance is drowning in debt and paralyzed by grief after her husband’s sudden death. Her last hope is the carriage house on her grand, isolated estate. She rents it to Leo Maxwell: a man who pays three months in cash, demands absolute silence, and refuses to speak a single word. He is meticulous, unnerving, and entirely untraceable—the perfect Silent Tenant.Amelia needs the rent money. But when Leo’s bizarre routines lead her to break into his locked apartment, she uncovers two terrifying truths:First: The mute man isn’t a killer, but a deeply wronged witness to a twenty-year-old cold case murder—the disappearance of a local girl near the river. Leo was silenced by the police and institutionalized to bury the truth.Second: The real lie isn’t buried in the woods. It’s buried in her own home. Leo’s complex, meticulous surveillance was never aimed at Amelia, but at the house itself, exposing a terrifying pattern of betrayal orchestrated by her late husband’s family.Amelia has a choice: remain the vulnerable widow her husband designed her to be, accepting his final, lucrative bribe for her silence, or forge a desperate alliance with the mysterious tenant to expose the full lie that spans two decades.She has the evidence: the rusty shoe, the confession tape, and a surveillance journal tracking her every move. The only problem? The killer, now exposed, is still close enough to hear her scream.A perfect, twist-filled read for fans of domestic suspense novels with a big twist ending and isolated setting thriller. When the man who controls the silence breaks it, the truth is louder than a gunshot.Tess Wilder’s unforgettable psychological thriller will keep you guessing until the final, shocking note.