Just after 11am on August 4, 1892, the bodies of Andrew and Abby Borden are discovered. He’s found on the living room sofa, she upstairs on the bedroom floor, both gruesomely murdered with an axe.

It’s the younger daughter, Lizzie, who’s first on the scene, so it’s Lizzie who the police first question. But there are others in the household with stories to tell: older sister Emma, Irish maid Bridget, the girls’ Uncle John, and a boy who knows more than anyone realizes.

In a dazzlingly original and chilling reimagining of this most notorious of unsolved mysteries, Sarah Schmidt opens to the door to the Borden home and leads us into its murkiest corners, where jealousies, long-simmering rivalries, and the darkest of thoughts reside.

Praise for See What I Have Done:

A National Bestseller

“A bloody good read . . . A taut, lyrical account of the destruction of the Borden family . . . brings to mind Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Everything about Schmidt’s novel is hauntingly, beautifully off.”—USA Today

“Schmidt has created a lurid and original work of horror.”—New York Times Book Review

“A prickly, unsettling wonder: a story so tactile and feverishly surreal it feels like a sort of reverse haunting . . . As much as See What I Have Done is Borden’s story, it’s also an unvarnished glimpse of what it means to be female, in ways not strictly confined to the late 19th century.”—Entertainment Weekly

“[Schmidt creates an] atmosphere of brooding dread and lurking neurosis . . . a sense of claustrophobia and entrapment appropriate to her tale of seething jealousies and familial love and hate inextricably intertwined.”—Boston Globe

“A gripping and still puzzling story.”—Wall Street Journal

“Deliciously disturbing . . . [Schmidt’s] prose is clever and taut and generously seasoned with nouns verbing their way into literary history.”—New York Journal of Books

“A barn-burning, fever-ridden first novel. It makes blistering reading out of first-rate historical fiction . . . Hilary Mantel, in her brilliant re-creation of Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall and Bringing Up the Bodies, may be the best practitioner alive, but this book announces Schmidt as a new sister in the craft.”—Newsday

“Schmidt is undeniably a fine writer.”—Dallas Morning News

“An outstanding debut novel about love, death, and the lifelong repercussions of unresolved grief.”—Observer

“Schmidt weaves a complicated, compelling tale . . . giving fresh life to a sensational crime of old.”—Marie Claire

“[A] moody, atmospheric tale . . . Superb.”—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Novels that manage to spin a genuinely skin-crawling atmosphere, such as Patrick Süskind’s Perfume, are rare, and Schmidt is a master . . . See What I Have Done deserves to be considered a Gothic classic.”—Saturday Paper

“Debut novelist Sarah Schmidt tackles the murk and silence in this old tale, imagining the cruel secrets of a respected family.”—Elle, one of 24 Best Books To Read This Summer

“[The] novel is compelling, scary—and gruesomely visceral.”—Entertainment Weekly, one of Summer’s 20 Must-Read Books

“This palpable imagining of what led to the murder of Lizzie Borden’s parents will stay with you for as long as this historical mystery has enthralled pop culture.”—Redbook, one of the Best Summer Reads

“[An] unforgettable debut . . . Equally compelling as a whodunit, ‘whydunit,’ and historical novel.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A dazzling debut novel that is as unsettling as the summer heat that permeates the crime scene . . . an unusually intimate portrait. There are books about murder and there are books about imploding families; this is the rare novel that seamlessly weaves the two together, asking as many questions as it answers.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Heralds the arrival of a major new talent . . . Nail-biting horror mixes with a quiet, unforgettable power to create a novel readers will stay up all night finishing.”—Booklist (starred review)

“What better subject for a psychological thriller than one of the most notorious murders in U.S. history . . . A fresh treatment of Lizzie Borden.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“[A] gory and gripping debut.”—Guardian

“Lizzie Borden might be the archetypal transgressive female, and Sarah Schmidt has taken the 81 whacks and the parents that were dealt them and spun a mesmerising reimagining of it all . . . Schmidt writes with precision and flair about the oppressive boredom of domesticity, the twisted intensity of sisterly love and the forlorn dreams of leaving and of personal reinvention . . . A glittering, gory fever dream of a book, See What I Have Done is a remarkable debut.”—Telegraph

“This novel is like a crazy murdery fever dream, swirling around the day of the murders. Schmidt has written not just a tale of a crime, but a novel of the senses. There is hardly a sentence that goes by without mention of some sensation, whether it’s a smell or a sound or a taste, and it is this complete saturation of the senses that enables the novel to soak into your brain and envelope you in creepy uncomfortableness. It’s a fabulous, unsettling book.”—Book Riot

“Eerie and compelling, Sarah Schmidt breathes such life into the terrible, twisted tale of Lizzie Borden and her family, she makes it impossible to look away.”—Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

Excerpt:

I walked back inside, refilled the bucket with warm water. Back on my hands and knees I cleaned the wall behind the sofa, noticed hair-fine cracks along the skirting board and tried not to think about Father, but he was all around me. I scrubbed harder knowing that behind the wall, Father and Abby’s bodies were rigid from disbelief. The heat trapped in the room began to circulate and ran across my fingers. I wiped them on my dress, afraid of what the air was carrying.

A strange wind howl whipped from the floral carpet; a lost child, frightened animal, a haunting. I scrubbed, my throat tight and sore, a strangulation, and the howl came again, so loud it filled my ears, stung my eyes, shocked the hair on my arms into tiny needles. The howl. The howl was me. How had I forgotten what grief would sound like? I was no stranger to it.

Then there was movement along the ceiling and a door opened.

On the top of the stairs Lizzie sighed and cleared her throat before walking down and I dragged my head toward my sister: arms folded across her chest, head tilted to the side.

“Emma, don’t cry.” Lizzie cooed, took a step closer. I pulled back, Lizzie looked at the dining room door. Her fingers twitched, mouth opened and she stared at the mess in front of us. The basin of blood hummed. Watching Lizzie, my strange, strange sister, she became a shadow, a shape not quite alive but full of movement nonetheless. I could smell the secrets on her, that mushroom scent.