What is the title of your latest release?
THE NEIGHBORS ARE WATCHING
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A mom who’s about to be an empty-nester and a Gen-Z librarian team up to solve a murder in their wealthy suburb.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
That’s easy – the DC suburbs! All my books are set here, among perfectly manicured lawns and white picket fences that hide terrible secrets.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
Yes, and I really do hang out with them, both my main characters! I know lots of Gen-X women, like Caren, whose kids are heading off to college and re-evaluating their lives. I also know quite a few young trans folks, like Finn, who are just starting out in the world.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Caren: maternal, overlooked, hardworking. Finn: loyal, dogged, gentle.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
For Tori’s POV I did a bunch of research about the way LLMs adapt to give users the answers they want, and to hook users to keep them coming back. Tori becomes involved with a chatbot that encourages her to explore terrible urges. Turns out this is very common for AI and it has already led to terrible consequences in the real world, not just in fiction1
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I edit as I go. I can’t help it! I’m a very non-linear writer and I dip in and out of the MS, writing scenes out of order, going back to polish, etc.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
One hundred percent it is Graeter’s Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip ice cream. It is the nectar of the Gods.
Describe your writing space/office!
Ummm, my living room mostly? I take one couch, put my feet up. My Golden Retriever, Pistachio, takes the opposite couch and stares at me while I write.
Who is an author you admire?
Agatha Christie. She authored nearly 90 books, and I have read most of them. She wrote her last book at the age of 82. Very inspirational.
Is there a book that changed your life?
TALES OF THE CITY by Armistead Maupin. In fact, the whole series. I read them in middle school and immediately set out to write my own novel. I reread them every few years. I love the huge cast of characters, the setting of San Francisco, the mix of laughter and tears, the found family, and the little mysteries woven throughout.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was in the kitchen when my agent called me. I had one of those legal yellow pads of paper. She told me we had gotten our first offer. I stifled a scream. As she spoke about the details I scrawled on the pad in block letters: I AM GOING TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!!!
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Mystery
What’s your favorite movie?
That is very tough. I love lots of different movies, for different reasons. But I’ll go with Blue Velvet by David Lynch.
What is your favorite season?
It used to be fall. I love the crisp weather and the leaves changing. But as I’ve gotten older, and built up a beautiful garden, I’ve come to really love summer. The long days, fresh berries from the garden, butterflies, cocktails on the porch.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
By ignoring it. I just don’t really care. A friend bakes me a flourless chocolate cake each year and that is basically all I need.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Like everyone, I am watching and loving Widow’s Bay right now. But if I want to recommend something a little less well-known, I’ll go with a movie that came out in 2022 called Watcher. It’s a very suspenseful psychological thriller about an American woman who moves to Bucharest with her husband. She doesn’t speak the language and finds herself isolated when she realizes a man in the building across the street is watching her.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Almost impossible to say! But my favorite restaurant in DC is Bistro Aracosia, an Afghan restaurant in Palisades. The saffron chicken is delicious.
What do you do when you have free time?
Hike, garden, play Mah Jonng, haunt used bookstores, go into DC for plays, museums, weird movies.
What can readers expect from you next?
I am just finishing my sixth book: HIDE ME IN THE NIGHT – a dual timeline suspense that weaves the story of a woman who returns to her childhood home to clean it out, and is the last person to see a woman go missing on her cul-de-sac, with a 1975 narrative of a young newlywed who realizes she has married a serial killer.
THE NEIGHBORS ARE WATCHING by Aggie Blum Thompson
Narrator: Alex Picard
A Novel
From the “master of suburban scandal” (Samantha M. Bailey) comes a scandalous twisty thriller about obsession, betrayal, and the price of perfection
Just outside Washington D.C. sits Eastbrook, Bethesda — a leafy suburb with top schools, manicured lawns, and friendly neighbors. It’s not the kind of place where nannies are shot during robberies gone wrong. But like any picture-perfect neighborhood, it’s been easy to cover up the shadows and move on.
A year after the unsolved neighborhood murder, Caren, nearing fifty and staring down an empty nest, has one too many drinks at a graduation party and blacks out on her way home. At least, that’s what everyone says happened. Caren suspects she was drugged by someone. But who?
When Caren teams up with a new neighbor who is desperate to figure out who murdered his best friend last year, they start to uncover what Eastbrook has tried to forget. But in a place where appearances are everything, their search for the truth means not only shattering carefully built façades — but putting themselves squarely in the crosshairs of a killer.
Thriller Domestic [ Minotaur Books, On Sale: June 30, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9781250412553 / eISBN: 9781250412560 ]
Buy THE NEIGHBORS ARE WATCHING: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Libro.fm | Audible | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Aggie Blum Thompson
Aggie worked as a newspaper reporter, covering cops, courts, and trials, with a healthy dose of the mundane mixed in. Her writing has appeared in newspapers such as The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. A native New Yorker, she now lives just over the Washington D.C. line in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband, two children, cat, and dog.
I DON’T FORGIVE YOU is Aggie’s first novel.
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