Some families leave you heirlooms.

Others leave you records, scars, and a past designed to erase you.

After her father’s death, Elise Scott returns to Ashdown expecting grief, paperwork, and distance. Instead, she walks into a perfectly curated life that no longer matches her memories — a mother who denies, a brother who mocks, neighbors who speak in riddles, and a childhood recorded in psychiatric files she doesn’t remember living.

A hospital bracelet marked 237.

A folder that disappears and reappears.

Conflicting reports of violence — some petty, some monstrous.

Duplicated notebook entries she swears she didn’t write.

Memories that contradict themselves in the space of a breath.

Someone has rewritten her past. The question is who — and why.

When a brass key etched 237 leads her back to Northbridge, Elise uncovers the truth her family buried beneath money, power, and silence: an empire built on blackmail, corruption, and carefully managed narratives. In its vault lies the evidence her father collected on judges, politicians, even her own brother… and a golden box addressed only to her.

Inside: a letter naming her heir.

A warning about the darkness they tried to erase.

And a choice only she can make.

Expose the family.

Save what’s left of herself.

Or become exactly what her father groomed her to be.

A gothic-modern psychological thriller of fractured memory, generational manipulation, and the cost of uncovering what was always meant to stay buried, THE LIES WE INHERIT is for readers who crave elegant dread, unreliable truth, and a heroine fighting to determine whether she is the danger — or merely the one who finally stops it.

Perfect for fans of Sharp Objects, The Family Upstairs, and The Push.