The Sleepwalker

A Novel

By: Chris Bohjalian

Narrated by: Cady McClain, Grace Experience

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Guest Room comes a spine-tingling novel of lies, loss, and buried desire—the mesmerizing story of a wife and mother who vanishes from her bed late one night.

When Annalee Ahlberg goes missing, her children fear the worst. Annalee is a sleepwalker whose affliction manifests in ways both bizarre and devastating. Once, she merely destroyed the hydrangeas in front of her Vermont home. More terrifying was the night her older daughter, Lianna, pulled her back from the precipice of the Gale River bridge. The morning of Annalee's disappearance, a search party combs the nearby woods. Annalee's husband, Warren, flies home from a business trip. Lianna is questioned by a young, hazel-eyed detective. And her little sister, Paige, takes to swimming the Gale to look for clues. When the police discover a small swatch of fabric, a nightshirt, ripped and hanging from a tree branch, it seems certain Annalee is dead, but Gavin Rikert, the hazel-eyed detective, continues to call, continues to stop by the Ahlbergs' Victorian home. As Lianna peels back the layers of mystery surrounding Annalee's disappearance, she finds herself drawn to Gavin, but she must ask herself: Why does the detective know so much about her mother? Why did Annalee leave her bed only when her father was away? And if she really died while sleepwalking, where was the body?
Conjuring the strange and mysterious world of parasomnia, a place somewhere between dreaming and wakefulness, The Sleepwalker is a masterful novel from one of our most treasured storytellers.

Critic reviews

"Masterful... The Sleepwalker is Bohjalian at his best: a creepily compelling topic and an illusionist’s skill at tightening the tension. This is a novel worth losing sleep over." —Patty Rhule, USA Today

"The kind of mystery that builds to a startling climax, the kind that makes the reader wonder how such a trick was pulled off...Bohjalian does a masterful job."
—Clea Simon, the Boston Globe

"Sex, secrets and the mysteries of sleep: These are the provocative ingredients in Chris Bohjalian’s spooky thriller The Sleepwalker. It’s a dark, Hitchcockian novel… Trust me, you will not be able to stop thinking about it days after you finish reading this book." —Carol Memmott, The Washington Post

"Literary and compelling, a combination so rare I’m tempted to apply for federal intervention. . . I hesitate to say more, because to know too much may spoil the fun of discovery. Rest assured the denouement is perfect. This is Bohjalian at his very best." —Curt Shleier, The Seattle Times

"A perfectly crafted surprise ending… Bohjalian succeeds in making us accomplices in a dark world we never knew existed." —Laura Patten, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Interesting story. Narration awful!

I think I will read this book. I think the story line is interesting. But the narration of this audiobook really is terrible. I can't finish it.

Didn't see the ending coming!

This was one of those stories that I was certain I knew the resolution to as it was going on. I am so glad that I was wrong. Both narrators did a wonderful job with this book. And as an added bonus, one of the narrator's character identity (The one read by the amazing Grace Experience) is only revealed at the end.

Good twisty story

Enjoyed the storyline. A good who-done- it. Didn’t love the narrator but hung in there and got used to her voice. Glad I did

So so story with great ending

Sub par story for this author. The ending is great, but to get there is hardly worth it.

Narrator not so great!

I just started this book today, and I am finding the narrator difficult to listen to. She pauses in odd places and it often sounds as if she is a computer, not a human, as if they have used auto-tune on her voice or something. I will update when I finish the book, or if I decide to give up on it.