Kit Frick Reveals The Night of the Party, a Suspense Novel About Revenge and a Missing Guest

Kit Frick’s next adult suspense novel, The Night of the Party, will be published by Atria Books on May 4, 2027. PEOPLE revealed the cover on November 4. The novel follows a horror writer who returns to her hometown, throws a party to get even with her former bullies, and becomes the prime suspect when one of them disappears. The details of the case are uncomfortably close to a story she’s already written.

What is The Night of the Party about?

Cat Lenox left Sumac Grove for college in New York City and had little reason to look back. Then her grandfather dies shortly before her debut YA horror novel comes out. At the funeral, Cat finds herself back among the women who made her teenage years miserable. She’s already used them as inspiration for characters who meet violent ends in her book. Now she sees a chance to make some money off them, too.

Cat stages what looks like a benefit reception, using it as cover for a multilevel marketing scheme aimed at her former classmates. Then one of the women vanishes on the night of the party. The similarities to Cat’s manuscript put her at the center of the investigation.

How Stephen King’s Carrie fits into the story

Carrie is the inspiration for the book Cat writes inside Frick’s novel. The setup gives a familiar revenge story a second life. Cat gets to decide what happens to her former tormentors on the page, but once someone disappears, other people get to decide what her fiction says about her. That’s the part of the premise I’m most curious about. How much can a story tell you about what its author might actually do?

Frick told PEOPLE that she started imagining Cat and her former classmates during the pandemic, after moving back to her own hometown of Pittsburgh. Illustrator and designer Michaela MacPherson’s cover leans into the book’s dark humor with a party hat, a shovel and blood spatter.

For more on King’s debut and where it fits in his career, read our guide to Stephen King’s books.

When does The Night of the Party come out?

The U.S. release is scheduled for May 4, 2027, and preorders are open. Simon & Schuster lists a 352-page trade paperback, an ebook and an unabridged audiobook download. The U.S. paperback ISBN is 9781668099056.

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If you want to see what happens when Cat’s horror plot follows her home, preorder The Night of the Party on Amazon.

For a Kit Frick thriller you can read now, try Friends and Liars. Four estranged friends reunite at an Italian estate, where a powerful family draws them into a deadly game.

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