He's Gotta Go

by Marilee Albert

Genres: Women's Fiction; Female Sleuths; Domestic Thrillers

Synopsis

He's Gotta Go is a wickedly intelligent domestic thriller about marriage, money, and the fantasies we nurture just to survive another school pickup line.

Nina Simmons is drowning-financially, emotionally, existentially. Trapped in a crumbling marriage to a passive husband, raising two struggling boys, and caring for a deteriorating mother-in-law in the suffocating perfection of Hidden Hills, Nina's life has become an endless loop of sacrifice, resentment, and quiet despair. As the bills pile up and the illusion of security evaporates, a single thought begins to steady her nerves and sharpen her focus: He's gotta go.

What begins as a private mantra evolves into something far more dangerous. Nina is smart, observant, and meticulous-and she has learned a great deal from true-crime documentaries about how people get caught. If she's going to do this, she intends to do it perfectly.

But Nina isn't the only woman harboring secrets. As the novel unfolds through the intersecting lives of Nina, a glamorous new neighbor with a flawless façade, a private investigator on the verge of escape from corporate purgatory, and an artist whose self-destructive appetites are catching up with her, He's Gotta Go becomes a taut, multi-voiced examination of power, desire, and the quiet violence embedded in modern domestic life.

Darkly comic, sharply observed, and unsettlingly plausible, He's Gotta Go skewers wealth, marriage, motherhood, and the myths women are told about endurance and gratitude. Marilee Albert delivers a fearless, satirical thriller that asks an uncomfortable question: when survival itself feels criminal, how far would you go to reclaim your life?

Release date: October 6, 2026

Publisher: Rare Bird Books

Print pages: 280