High Society

by Daniel Kalla

Genres: Medical Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

From internationally bestselling author Daniel Kalla comes a twisty psychological thriller about a pioneering psychiatrist hiding dark secrets, in the vein of The Golden Couple by Hendricks and Pekkanen and Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty.

At sixteen, Holly Danvers barely survived the car accident that killed her father. While she has no memory of the crash, it took an ayahuasca treatment, a native plant-based psychedelic therapy, in the jungles of Peru for her to emotionally recover. Twenty years later, Holly is a sought-after psychiatrist determined to use her expertise with psychedelics to treat patients suffering from addictions. Ignoring the risks, she embarks upon an unproven new protocol with miraculous results. But her success in probing the traumas of her patients and the secrets they keep is short-lived.

When one celebrity client goes public with his recovery and another overdoses after accusing Holly of improprieties, her world is turned upside down. With her career on the line, Holly reaches out to her mentor—and estranged husband—Dr. Aaron Laing, for advice and comfort. But he has a different agenda, and it soon becomes clear that it will be up to Holly alone to figure out why her clients are relapsing and dying. To accomplish that, she will have to risk her life and revisit her own deep-seated trauma.

Release date: May 28, 2024

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Print pages: 352

Sample

Prologue

PROLOGUE
Two years hadn’t dulled the pain. If anything, the hole in her soul had grown bigger. Holly didn’t think she could miss her father any more than she already did, but being this far away from home made the memories of him feel fuzzier, his absence more acute.

What am I doing here with all these old burnt-out hippies and weirdos?

Holly resented her grandfather for dragging her to this primeval Peruvian jungle, five thousand miles from home. But even the struggling eighteen-year-old realized he had only acted out of love and concern.

Holly had been in a downward spiral ever since the accident. Her grades had plummeted. She was disconnected from the few friends who had stuck with her through her grief. And life alone in the house with her melancholic and withdrawn mom felt more like living in a tomb. More than once, Holly had eyed the bottles lining her mother’s medicine cabinet, imagining what a relief it would be to just swallow all the pills.

“Trust me, Koala,” her grandfather had promised her with a sad smile as they boarded the plane for Lima. “This will help you.”

But this was his world, not hers. Everything about it felt foreign to Holly. At times, nightmarish. The twisted tangle of branches forming such a thick canopy that Holly couldn’t see the sky. The constant hums, thrums, buzzes, and chirps. Even the smells—a combination of vegetation, moisture, soil, and decay—made her want to puke. It all gave her the unsettling sense of being just another rung on the food chain of the living ecosystem that engulfed her.

Holly was the youngest one on the retreat by at least fifteen years. She had been mortified that first morning when she had to shed her clothes and immerse herself in the communal plant bath—basically just a deeper pool in the muddy stream that ran beside their encampment—in front of all the other women in the group. And she found the ceremony that followed it on the dirt floor of that weird circular hut, with its smelly inhalants, purgatives, and poultices, to be just as unnerving.

None of this mystic bullshit will bring Dad back. Or make me any less responsible for what happened to him.

That evening, the group gathered after dusk in the clearing for what would become a nightly ritual. By the time Holly sat down with the others around the roaring fire, she could feel the panic welling inside her chest. Sensing her growing distress, her grandfather reached over and gently took her hand in his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. That helped for a while. Then the kettle dangling above the dancing flames began to hiss, and the bitter, acrid stench of the special tea brewing inside turned her stomach and reignited her apprehension.

As she reluctantly brought the clay cup to her lips for the first time, feeling nothing but dread and regret, Holly would have never guessed that her life was about to be transformed.