The Stranger Diaries

Clare is a high school English teacher who teachers in an old house that was formerly the home of R. M. Holland, author of "The Stranger". This excites her, as she has plans to write a book about Holland and hopefully solve some of the mysteries surrounding him, notably what happened to his wife Alice and possible daughter Marianna. These plans are put to the side after a fellow teacher, Ella, is found murdered, her body accompanied by the handwritten note "Hell is empty", a quote from "The Stranger" and Shakespeare's The Tempest. Initially intending to remain unnoticed by the detectives investigating the murder, Harbinder Kaur and her partner Neil, Clare becomes involved in the investigation partly due to her ties to Ella and also because she deliberately hides information about Ella's affair with Rick, the leader of the school English department. The murderer also leaves her messages in her private journal that gives off the impression that they are obsessed with Clare, particularly after Rick is found murdered.

The police have many suspects, such as Georgie's friend Patrick, but no definitive evidence that links them to the murders. Eventually an attack on Clare's ex-husband Simon prompts Harbinder to recommend that Clare and Georgie go to Clare's grandparents' home in Scotland while Harbinder herself remains in their home, in the hopes of catching the killer unawares. She instead discovers that the handwriting of Georgie's 21-year-old boyfriend Ty matches the killer's handwriting exactly, as some postcards he'd sent Georgie caught her attention. Harbinder rushes to Scotland and manages to catch Ty just as he was about to murder Georgie.

When interviewed, Ty states that he had first met Clare when she was attending a teacher conference in his city. He had been working as a bartender and fallen instantly in love with her, so he followed her home and began squatting in a nearby abandoned factory, taking work at a local bar. He decided to begin dating Georgie after deciding that she needed to be protected, not out of actual love for the girl. He justifies his killings by saying that both Rick and Ella were upsetting Clare, having learned about them from her journal. He gives similar rationales for Simon and Georgie, adding that once they were gone he and Clare could start over.

The novel ends with Clare noting that she was encouraged to take a position as the deputy lead of the English department and that her daughter shows promise as a horror writer. For her part Georgie uncovers the truth about Marianna, specifically that she was a dog Holland had doted upon after his wife's death.

Griffith chose to set the novel in an ordinary school as she "wanted to set the book somewhere very everyday as well, somewhere that can bridge the everyday and the more spooky and surreal". She drew upon her twin children when writing the character of Georgie and her own experiences of writing a diary, a practice she has kept up since the age of 11, for Clare's habit of journal writing. Griffith stated that she was interested in revisiting the character but that The Stranger Diaries was initially intended to be a standalone novel.[1] In 2020 she released the second novel in the series, The Postscript Murders, through Quercus Publishing.[2]

The Stranger Diaries was first published in paperback format in the United Kingdom during 2018 through Quercus Publishing.[3] It was re-published in hardcover in the United States and United Kingdom on 5 March 2019 through Houghton Mifflin.[4] An audiobook adaptation narrated by Esther Wane, Sarah Feathers, and Anjana Vasan Quercus, with Andrew Wincott narrating the portions of "The Stranger", was released through Quercus Publishing and Recorded Books.[5]

A Swedish translation by Carla Wiberg was published in Sweden through Modernista, which also released an audiobook adaptation narrated by Angela Kovács.[6][7] Hugo Thriller published a French translation that same year, under the title Le Journal de Claire Cassidy.[8]

The Guardian and Seattle Times both reviewed The Stranger Diaries, with the Seattle Times drawing comparison to Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders and both outlets praising the novel's characters.[9][10]