The Tutor

by Courtney Psak

Genres: Women's Fiction; Female Sleuths; Psychological Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Don't miss The Tutor, an utterly gripping psychological thriller with a heart-stopping twist, perfect for fans of Valerie Keogh and Daniel Hurst. Available to pre-order now!

Letting her into your home was your first mistake...

Rose is a dedicated wife and mother to her husband Grant and her son James. Having recently moved to a grand mansion in Florida, Rose is keen for James to fit in with his new life and hires a tutor.

Isabel is young, smart and beautiful, and not only gets along with James, but she gets results.

But when Isabel starts to get too close for comfort, Rose can't help but think that Isabel is looking for more than just tutoring.

Can Rose uncover who exactly she has let into her house, or will this lesson be deadly?

Release date: August 7, 2025

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 320

Sample

Isabel

Isabel knows she shouldn’t be in here. It is, after all, a private office. But she knew he would be out for lunch, and that it would be empty, and she saw her opportunity. She puts her hand on the door, already slightly ajar, and it makes a slow creaking noise. She gives one last glance back to be sure no one is coming before she steps inside, closing the door behind her with a slight click. She flicks on the light, bringing the dark shadows into focus. A cherry-wood desk as old as the school itself rests in front of a large window that overlooks the campus quad. She can see some eighth-grade students eating their lunches on the benches that line the walkway, while others throw a football, their suit jackets laid flat on the grass, yellow and blue striped ties flung over their shoulders, enjoying the last few days of school before summer begins.

A prickle of heat dances on the back of Isabel’s neck as she lowers her head to avoid detection. Her long, jet-black hair falls forward as she gingerly pulls at one of the desk drawers. Her fingers flip through the files, but she doesn’t find what she’s looking for. She tries several others but still comes up empty. She shoves the last drawer closed with a huff. The head of the school, Daniel Lopez, is a very clean and organized man. Nothing is askew on his desk. He has a green Tiffany lamp that sits to the right of his brown desk pad, which he balances out with a family picture in a gold frame on the opposite side. She eyes the portrait with a twinge of jealousy at the image of him with an arm wrapped around a man she assumes is his adult son in a stadium at a baseball game. She finds herself imagining she too is at the game and wonders what Dan would be like as a father. He does seem to have a paternal instinct around Isabel, but she figures it’s because she’s barely out of college, graduating only a year ago. Isabel takes in the familiarity of Dan’s features and feels that with her tanned olive skin, broad face, and espresso almond eyes, she too could look like a member of this family. A glint of light reflects off the frame, pulling her from her daydream. Something silver among the gold. She flicks her eyes down at the desk pad and pulls it slightly back. The sound of metal scratching against wood lets her know that there is something underneath it.

Picking up the mat, she spots a key, then turns her head towards the locked cabinet on the bottom of one of the matching bookshelves. Isabel kneels in front of it, inserting the key. With a slight twist of her hand, the lock releases. A stack of manila envelopes sits in a neat pile and she pulls them out, noting the names that are labeled until she sees what she’s looking for.

James Clark.

Placing the other files aside, she opens the folder. At the top is the transfer request form that she learned about. She turns the page over to the next form behind it.

Transfer request record for James Clark to be sent to the Pelican Academy, Palm Beach, Florida.

Isabel’s heart beats faster. She pulls out her phone, hovering it over the file before hearing the click of her camera.

She wonders why this file was in a locked cabinet, but then flips to the next page. Her eyes widen.

The sound of a thud on the other side of the door causes her to jump.

With hands shaking, she quickly slides the files back into place, locking the cabinet and returning the key to its hiding place.

She is about to open the door when she remembers to turn the light off. Muffled voices stop her from proceeding. She can’t tell if they are coming towards her or going away. The lie she has prepared is running on a loop in her head, ready to use at any moment, when the voices stop. She exhales. Cautiously, she peers around before closing the door, although not entirely, just as she had found it.

When Isabel returns to her desk, she looks up the Pelican Academy on her computer. A whitewash of students in uniforms parading with one another carousel across the page below the name of the school and its crest. Not very different from their own private school website.

She scans their social media posts and community chat boards when she sees her in.

A big congratulations to Mrs. Snider on her baby announcement. Rest assured we will find the perfect candidate to fill her shoes until she returns.

Bingo.

Isabel dials the number of the school, chatting with the receptionist about where to send her details, and schedules an interview.

She feels more relaxed now, but there is still a nervous energy boiling inside her. She has a long way to go for her plan to succeed.

“Isabel, working hard through lunch?”

Isabel jumps at the high chirping voice that breaks the silence.

“Jeez, Theresa. Sorry, I was deep in thought. I didn’t even hear you come in.”

“I just got back,” says Theresa, pulling her purse off her shoulder and letting it fall to her desk. She tames her red frizzy hair into a tight ponytail as she peers up at the clock on the wall, smoothing her flyaways. “Should’ve come to Dan’s birthday celebration with us, Isabel. It was the lunch of the century.” She gives a slight chuckle.

Isabel smiles. “I bet.”

“It really was, actually.” Theresa sits down at her desk, putting on her reading glasses, and powers up her computer. “I know you’ve only been here for less than a year, but Dan pulls out all the stops. We go to the best restaurants and order everything on the menu.”

“Uh-huh.” Isabel continues typing while she considers the information she just discovered.

“Anyway, the rest of the team should be back any minute now.” Theresa types away, then she stops. “What did you have to work on, anyway?”

Isabel blinks in rapid succession. It’s not Theresa’s business to know that she stayed behind so she could break into Dan’s office. “Just running a bit behind on my work. We only have a few more days until the school year ends.” She shrugs.

Theresa says something that Isabel doesn’t hear, but she nods her along, returning her eyes to the computer at her desk.

A few hours later, Isabel takes the subway through the city. The lull of the locomotive makes her eyelids heavy, and the fast pace makes the vibrant colors of red, orange and gold in the advertisements on the subway wall all blur into one. She has slept little this past year. Not since her grandmother got sick and eventually passed. The only person she had left in the world. A weight of sorrow sits heavy on Isabel’s chest as she remembers the light in her eyes. For a grandmother, she was relatively young, in her early sixties, but cancer can come at any age.

The landlord gave Isabel these past few weeks to sort through her grandmother’s belongings, to make harrowing decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of, not knowing if she’d be throwing away a piece of the past that meant something to her, or her mother.

That was the other painful part of it. She had come across items of her mother’s that her grandmother had held on to. Pieces of clothing she hadn’t been able to part with, possibly because at the time it had still had her daughter’s scent. Isabel found herself doing the same with her grandmother’s clothes. She had little room in her own tiny apartment to store everything, and she debated if it would make sense to get a storage unit. But she realized that it was an expensive way to delay the inevitable.

Isabel, lost in her own head, hears the ping of the subway doors open and sees everyone around her standing up. She follows suit, the white noise of the bustling New York commuters imbuing her and all of 86th Street with a sense of eagerness even though she isn’t in a hurry. She allows the flood of people in a rush to funnel out first before following behind. Several bump her on their way to enter the train, but Isabel keeps her head down. She effortlessly bleeds into the background, like a ghost.

The smell of something sour enters her nostrils, quickening her climb to the street. It’s times like this that she realizes she wouldn’t miss this place much.

She walks the next few blocks until the magnificent white structure of the Met comes into view around the corner, like a beacon. Its uplighting emphasizes the fluttering oversized banners advertising the newest exhibit, beckoning people to come and see.

She lines up at the hot dog stand, smiling at the vendor, but he doesn’t acknowledge her. There is no sense of recognition that she’s been here several times a week for a while now. She’s just another customer to him, which is good. That’s what she wants, to be invisible.

After her first bite, she checks her watch and looks at the corner of the building across the street. Most of the faces blend together, the same drawn-looking expressions as people push past one another in a hurry.

It’s then that she sees him standing at the window, and she stiffens. His arms are crossed as he looks down at the sea of commuters, clearly waiting for her.

Goosebumps form on Isabel’s otherwise smooth skin.

Then she spots the woman, tearing frantically around the corner, weaving in and out of the crowd. The woman looks up at him in the window and gives an apologetic wave, as if she’s running late for something.

Shortly after, she disappears into the building. Isabel waits a few moments until she sees her appear in the window, a dark figure against the light. He kisses his wife on the lips, appearing to want her to linger longer, but she pulls away from him.

Isabel releases the breath she didn’t realize she was holding.

She stands up, wiping the crumbs of the hot dog bun off her hands. As she looks up again, she freezes. He is still in the window and it looks as if he’s staring directly at her. He couldn’t be, could he? Still, Isabel stands tall as if a dart has struck her.

She takes a deep breath, then smiles and waves, curious to see if she was right or if she was being paranoid.

He doesn’t wave back. He just stands with his arms crossed for a long pause before tilting his head back around, as if he is being called by someone, before disappearing into the apartment.

Isabel picks up her purse and slings it over her shoulder, giving one last glance towards the window. “See you in Palm Beach,” she says softly.

Rose

Rose is sitting in the back of the town car watching as the palm trees sway in the wind as they drive past. She can’t help but see her own reflection shining back at her in the window, dark hair swept up in a bun on top of her head, soft curtain bangs framing her eyebrows. Her white button-down is tied at the ends above her torn jeans. She looks pale compared to the people she sees riding bikes and strolling along the sidewalk. The ocean is a serene mix of aqua and turquoise, lapping against a white sand beach. They stop as an extended golf cart cuts them off, crossing the street. It’s full of beautiful, tanned women with designer sunglasses and beach cover-ups sitting on palm-printed seats. The roof of the cart displays a lacquered surfboard and decorative scalloped fabric. The cart parks up at the side of the road and the driver, dressed in white shorts, signals to someone on the beach, indicating the number of guests, while the person on the passenger side retrieves pink umbrellas with white tassels and teak beach chairs with baby pink and white fabric. While the guests in gold-studded sandals pose for a picture in front of the iconic Spanish-style bell tower, the driver pulls out a white cooler from the back and hands it over the retaining wall.

Rose envies these women here to celebrate Labor Day weekend together before returning to their homes, somewhere far away. Whereas she and her family are coming to live here, including her mother-in-law, Evelyn. The thought of it is as stifling as the Florida heat. She cranes her neck to look at the driver’s dashboard and notices that it’s 98 degrees. She rolls her eyes.

Across from her, her son James is looking out the window, no doubt eyeing the beautiful women that have spilled out onto the sidewalk. His mop of gold hair shines through the sun-streaked window. She can’t believe she’s old enough to have a high schooler now. One minute he was this skinny, frail kid, but now his shoulders have broadened, his arms are more toned than lanky and he has a protruding Adam’s apple underneath his collared shirt which contributes to his deepened voice. It makes her tear up just looking at him. He doesn’t need her anymore and before she knows it, he’ll be off to college, living on his own. It all seems to go by in the blink of an eye.

“We’re almost there,” Grant says from the front passenger seat. His voice is calm, but there is a hint of a strain, as if telling Rose to brace herself.

When they got married this past Christmas, she had not anticipated that she and James would be forced to move in with Grant’s ailing mother. But that’s just how it goes, she supposes. Unexpected things happen that change the trajectory of your life.

Rose anxiously spins her wedding ring around her thin finger as she thinks about Ian, her late husband. A mixture of guilt and anxiety swirl around in her thoughts. While her and Ian’s relationship had deteriorated years ago, she stayed for James. But his sudden death still hit her like a bombshell. Suddenly, she was left with nothing. She found that Ian had depleted their life savings, leaving her with barely enough money to support herself and James as she struggled to sell her art.

Meeting Grant when she had seemed almost like fate. In some weird way, it was as if the universe had planned it. She had been drowning, not only financially but in life.

She’d first met Ian at a trade show that she had gone to with a friend. He was eight years older and a furniture designer, but he was doing well for himself, and Rose was attracted to that stability. When she became pregnant, she was scared, but Ian was excited and promised to marry and support her. Being faithful to her, though, was apparently something entirely different. Eventually, she felt like an obligation. A mistake he’d made that he had to deal with.

But then he was gone and as if on cue, Grant stepped into her life, showing her what real love and happiness could look like.

But Rose hadn’t anticipated the effect that Evelyn would have on their lives, even when she wasn’t present.

When she and James moved into Grant’s penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park, it wasn’t a surprise to her it was his family’s home, where he had grown up. It was a prime piece of real estate, and she could see that you would want to keep it in the family. She had first seen it after an event at the Met, when Grant had persuaded her to come for a nightcap at his place across the street. Rose was taken back by the blue silk wallpaper, cut-marble staircase and Gilded Age furniture. She just assumed as a bachelor he hadn’t cared enough to change it.

What she hadn’t expected was that when she moved in, he’d still want to leave everything as it was. Like a shrine to Evelyn, right down to the oil painting of her, Grant, and his late father in a gold-leaf frame that looked down upon them in their living room. It was as if every object in that apartment represented their status, something that was off-putting to Rose. But she quickly forgave him when she met Evelyn, realizing it was she who wanted everything as it was.

The first encounter with Evelyn had been for tea at the Palm Court in the Plaza Hotel. Rose marveled at the marble Corinthian columns and large atrium. Crystal chandeliers dangled like enormous earrings from the gold ceiling. If you asked Rose to describe Evelyn, she would simply answer that she was the essence of the Palm Court, an old-world version of New York.

It was like nothing Rose had ever experienced before. Just standing in the space, she felt out of place and insignificant in this world of grandeur. Surely people like Evelyn could see right through her, and she had been right.

“Mother, I’d like you to meet Rose,” said Grant, stepping aside like a rising curtain on a stage theater to reveal Rose behind him.

Evelyn stared at her, her dark eyes beady as a hawk’s, her taut face framed by a voluminous layered silver bob, à la Jane Fonda. Her thin lips tightened into a frown, and she turned her attention to Grant. “Whatever happened to that other girl you were seeing, Sarah Preston?”

Grant cleared his throat awkwardly.

To Rose’s relief, they weren’t staying. This was merely a quick introduction before Grant surprised them both with a matinee show where conversation would be minimal. But Rose could feel Evelyn’s eyes on her throughout the play, like a laser burning the back of her neck. She had not been invited to join them for dinner.

“I was wondering if you’d be okay with James using the furniture from his old room,” Rose had asked Evelyn shortly before they’d moved into the penthouse. Grant had flown Evelyn in from Palm Beach for Thanksgiving—and perhaps also to get her blessing, Rose couldn’t help but wonder.

“It’s just, this move is a lot for him, and I want to give him a sense of home in his new surroundings.”

It had been a frosty New York afternoon, the air as crisp as the vibrantly colored dry leaves that were falling from the trees. But the chill in the air seemed to come more from Evelyn.

“Do you have any idea how much that furniture cost? It was custom-made for that very room.” Evelyn’s bony finger pointed up towards the staircase.

Rose bit her tongue then. She hadn’t wanted to start off on the wrong foot with Evelyn, but suggesting any sort of change appeared to be doing just that.

What Rose had come to learn was that whatever Evelyn wanted, Evelyn got.

“We’re here,” Grant announces.

James sits up in his seat while Rose turns her attention to the wrought-iron gates opening with a loud, decrepit creak. Amidst a thicket of jungle-like trees, the car moves at a slow crawl, as if it could be engulfed entirely. Then the tires crunch on the gravel as they come to a stop, in front of a cream-colored French baroque mansion.

James is the first to jump out of the car, his hair blowing in all different directions. Rose had noted the sudden change in weather at the north end of the island with interest. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was the same everywhere, or whether a permanent storm cloud just circled above her mother-in-law’s house like a villainous cartoon. Now, Rose’s curiosity is piqued as she contemplates whether the blonde babes heading to the beach are currently struggling to keep their oversized hats from blowing away, or if this storm is even touching them at all.

Grant is second out, the door slamming hard as the wind pulls it from his grip. With his head down, he makes his way to the trunk of the car to assist the driver with the bags.

Rose picks up the wrapper from James’s granola bar that fell unnoticed to the floor of the car. She does a quick sweep for any other items that might have been left behind. Grant’s AirPods from the plane are sitting in the cupholder. She scoops them up, putting them in her purse.

When she steps out, both James and Grant are about to approach the terracotta steps, lugging the last of the bags towards the front door. She drops the duffle at their feet.

Her eyes settle on the pecky cypress door and a bolt of dread jolts through her body like an electric shock as she worries about what is to come once she steps over the threshold.

Rose flashes back to Grant and her wedding day. She was sitting in their living room dressed in a simple ivory gown, watching as Grant massaged his mother’s shoulders, made sure her glass was never empty, tending to her every need, and Rose had admired it. She saw it as a good sign, that a son who took care of his mother would take care of his wife. But as she’d stared down at her empty glass of rosé, she’d also wondered if that really would translate, or if she’d always be second fiddle.

But she had to admit that he treated her better than any man ever had before.

“The caterer is here,” Grant had announced.

Rose thought a caterer was excessive when it was merely her, James, Grant, and Evelyn after their small courthouse wedding.

“James!” Grant called out. “Help me with the food, will you?”

“Sure,” James called back from upstairs where he had retreated with his video game.

“So, Rose”—Evelyn took a generous sip of her martini, a gold Christmas wreath charm wrapped around the stem—“do you love my son or did you simply marry him for his money?”

Rose was thankful her glass was empty because she dropped it on the robin’s-egg blue carpet between her feet.

“Excuse me?” Rose laughed, stunned, as she picked up her glass, thankful that it hadn’t broken.

Evelyn shrugged her shoulders and took another sip. “You needn’t try to fool me, dear. I know all about your past.”

A vice s. . .