Angie Kim

Miracle Creek opens with an explosion inside a pressurised oxygen chamber in rural Virginia that leaves two people dead, then settles into the trial that follows, where the Korean immigrant couple who ran the device, the parents of the children treated in it, and a defence lawyer each hold a piece of what actually happened. Angie Kim knew the ground from both sides. Born in Seoul, she moved with her family to the suburbs of Baltimore before her teens, studied at Stanford and then Harvard Law School, where she edited the Harvard Law Review, and practised as a trial lawyer at Williams and Connolly. Her own son had hyperbaric treatment of the kind the novel turns on. Published in 2019, the book took the Edgar for best debut novel, the ITW Thriller Award, the Strand Critics Award and the Pinckley Prize.