Sri Lankan author Jayatissa debuts with a dark, twisty psychological thriller. Thirty-year-old Paloma Evans was adopted at 12 from an orphanage in Sri Lanka by wealthy, loving American parents. Paloma's life should be perfect, but she's never felt she deserves her privileged life. After her parents go on an extended charity tour of Sri Lanka, Paloma drinks herself into blackouts, and perhaps hallucinations. Or are they? When she discovers her roommate murdered in her San Francisco apartment, she calls the police and passes out in the hallway. But the police find nothing. The body has disappeared without a trace. The building super allows Paloma to review the hallway surveillance tape, and the only person she sees is herself, taking cleaning supplies from the supply closet. Meanwhile, she's also started spotting Mohini, a mythic evil spirit who terrified her when she was a child in Sri Lanka. Paloma is either losing her grip on reality, or her secret past has caught up with her. Jaytissa expertly ratchets up the tension. Noir fans will find a lot to like. Agent: Melissa Danaczko, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (Sept.)

DEBUT Paloma Evans has issues. She's drinking heavily and believes she's being haunted by the ghost from a Sri Lankan folk tale; plus, she's just had a falling-out with her parents that can't be repaired. On top of that, her new roommate Arun has learned her darkest secret and is blackmailing her. She returns home one day, having resolved to deal with Arun--only to find him dead at the kitchen table. When police arrive at the apartment, there's no body and no sign that the young man (an undocumented immigrant) ever existed. Paloma has already fled. She seeks refuge at her parents' empty house, where she spirals into an alcohol-fueled breakdown and is tormented by the ghosts of her past. The narrative switches between two timelines: in one, 12-year-old Paloma is living at an orphanage in her native Sri Lanka; in the other, the present-day Paloma (now 30 and living in San Francisco) makes desperate attempts to escape the past but only magnifies her misery. VERDICT In her debut novel, Sri Lanka-based Jayatissa is a master of first-person narration as she delves into questions of identity--how individuals perceive themselves, and the tendency not to see others for who they really are. Her fast-paced mystery, with an unreliable but sympathetic narrator, will hook readers from the very beginning, but the twist ending might leave them disappointed and unsatisfied; the frequent profanity may also be problematic for some readers.--Vicki Briner, Broomfield, CO

A Bay Area woman is plagued by memories of a Sri Lankan orphanage in this psychological thriller. Paloma Evans, "the luckiest girl in the whole wide world"--or at least at the Little Miracles Girls' Home--is adopted by do-gooding philanthropists Mr. and Mrs. Evans when she's 12. That momentous event takes her away from the more dire elements of orphanage life--especially out of the clutches of the nasty Sister Cynthia--but it also means leaving her best friend, Lihini. Eighteen years later, living in San Francisco, Paloma is struggling: She drinks too much, feels abandoned by her adoptive parents, makes money from a slightly sordid source, and is convinced she's being haunted by the same ghost that her fellow residents believed haunted the orphanage. Then she comes home to find her roommate dead--murdered, in fact. Soon, along with interactions with her therapist, Nina, she's juggling the police, nosy neighbors, a potential stalker, and a friendly fellow Sri Lankan named Saman. Woven through with incisive references to Wuthering Heights, Little Women, Oliver Twist, Enid Blyton, The Sound of Music, and, above all, the lyrics to "Que Sera Sera," the novel often has a dreamlike quality (read: nightmarish) that heightens its sometimes-erratic quality of psychological suspense. The back-and-forth narrative between Paloma's childhood at the orphanage and her fraught, haunted adulthood in San Francisco nearly two decades later is a page-turner, albeit one in which some surprises mesh better than others. An uneven debut that nevertheless offers twists a-plenty. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Shifting back and forth between present-day San Francisco and a private orphanage in Sri Lanka in 2002, Jayatissa's debut thriller takes every opportunity to lead readers astray. Paloma Evans was adopted at 12 by wealthy white parents. At 30, she's living in a grim apartment, calls herself a graphic designer, and actually makes money by selling her used underwear online. Her parents' financial support isn't an option anymore. Besides, they're traveling again as global philanthropists. When the bank won't give her any more money to pay off her blackmailing roommate, she returns home drunk--again--to find Arun dead and the monstrous ghost from childhood back. Yet by morning, the corpse has disappeared. Sri Lanka-born-and-domiciled (with a California education) Jayatissa goes back and forth to portray Paloma now and reveal her origin story. Readers might figure out who's who and what's what rather quickly, but the details of how and why will require reaching the final, six-months-later chapter. Meanwhile, Jayatissa has a heyday exposing white-savior syndrome, religious hypocrisy, and mental-health system failures, with plenty of schadenfreude voyeurism.