Her mother makes love to strangers and chooses the worst kind of friends. Her classmates talk of going to college, but Madeleine, with a scholarship waiting at an Ivy League school, knows that escape is unlikely. For Maddy's life revolves around one thing: her jealous, raging, promiscuous mother.

And now that Maddy has a lover of her own, now that her mother's delusion-filled, grudge-filled, lover-filled life is crashing down around them, now that Maddy knows leaving would be the deadliest blow of all, there is only one way out: through a terrifying, disastrous moment that will change everything forever....

In her explosive novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Judith Rossner issued a chilling wake-up call to a generation intoxicated by sexual freedom. Now the New York Times bestselling author explores another fatal love: in this unforgettable novel of mother-daughter love gone torturously, tragically wrong.