She took a DNA test to prove her Mayflower line.
She got a dead woman and a father who never existed.
When pediatrician Dr. Lillian Marsh hires genealogist Maggie Penhallow to verify her Mayflower ancestry for the local DAR chapter, it looks like a routine research project. Then Lillian's AncestryDNA results arrive ? and buried in her close matches is a name nobody in her family has ever heard of.
A half-brother. 1,847 centimorgans. The DNA doesn't lie.
Two days after Lillian confronts the truth, she is found dead in her own kitchen.
The official cause of death: undetermined. Maggie's verdict: murder.
The half-brother ? Caleb Morrison, a biology teacher from Worcester who has spent four years trying to find his biological family ? arrives in Millbrook the afternoon of the funeral. He didn't kill Lillian. But the man the DNA leads to has spent forty years as the most trusted physician in town. And he has everything to lose.
Armed with the Shared cM Project, a methodology that cracked the Golden State Killer case, and one devastating fourteen-minute phone recording Lillian left behind, Maggie must trace the biological line forward through the family tree ? before the killer realizes how close she is.
For fans of Richard Osman, Louise Penny, and anyone who has ever opened a DNA results email with their heart in their throat.
Not the Parent Expected is the second book in the Millbrook Genealogy Mystery series ? warm, witty, and genealogically real, with a DNA science guide at the back of the book so you can use the same techniques yourself.
The Millbrook Genealogy Mystery Series
Book 2: Not the Parent Expected ? A DNA surprise that becomes a death sentence. You are here.
Clean read. No graphic violence. Slow-burn romance. Real genealogy technique you can use tonight.
Includes: Maggie's DNA Research Notes ? a practical guide to centimorgans, the Shared cM Project, and the ethics of unexpected DNA discovery.
Your DNA results are waiting. So is Maggie.
Autorentext
Some books you choose to read. Adriana Vale's choose you ? and they don't let go.
A writer of psychological thrillers woven with literary precision and the raw pulse of romance, Vale builds worlds where the ground shifts beneath every chapter and no one ? not the characters, not the reader ? is ever quite safe. Her stories operate on a simple, ruthless principle: every secret has a cost, and someone always pays.
Known for plots that coil tighter with every turn of the page, Vale plants her clues like landmines ? invisible until the moment they detonate. Her characters are not heroes or villains. They are people under impossible pressure, making choices that feel horrifyingly real, and that's exactly what makes them unforgettable.
Her prose is clean. Her pacing is relentless. Her endings are the kind that sit with you for days ? because somewhere between the first page and the last, you stopped reading and started surviving the story with them.
Warning: Do not start an Adriana Vale novel if you have somewhere to be.