A serial killer’s secret is at stake in Samantha Downing’s thriller ‘Too Old for This’ (Exclusive)

Read an exclusive excerpt from the author’s upcoming novel, hitting shelves in summer 2025

Samantha Downing is back in her thriller game with her upcoming release.

Downing is the author of bestsellers such as My dear wife, A twisted love story And For your own good. PEOPLE can exclusively share the cover of the author’s upcoming thriller, Too old for thisavailable this summer from Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Lottie Jones, a retired serial killer, thought she had left her life of crime behind. She moved to a small town, changed her name and largely stayed out of the spotlight. That is, until Plum Dixon arrives at her home.

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Plum, an investigative journalist, quickly pursues Lottie with questions about her past, not to mention her involvement in a number of unsolved crime cases. Any chances Lottie has of silencing Plum are complicated when another mysterious guest shows up on her doorstep – one who may also mean the end of her.

Read on for an exclusive excerpt from Too old for this.

“As I said, Reboot Productions specializes in telling the story behind the story. Here I show you the site.’ She pulls out her phone, jumps out of her chair and pushes the screen in front of my face.

“Looks nice.”

‘What I like to do is really dive into a story, I investigate…’

“So you’re a reporter.”

“No, I’m the producer. I own the company.” Plum smiles. She is quite proud of this. I’m sure it’s a huge achievement, but I’d be happier if she stopped chasing me.

“Congratulations.” The teapot whistles. I pour boiling water into our cups.

“Thanks. But I’d rather talk about you, not me.”

Here it is. I may be 75 years old, but I know a sales pitch when I hear one. It wasn’t that long ago that I bought my last car, and Plum reminds me a bit of the car salesman. Not a compliment.

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I placed the tray with tea, sugar, milk and spoons on the table.

“You really didn’t have to put in that much effort,” Plum says.

“I think I have some cookies too.”

“You don’t have to…”

‘It’s no problem. No problem at all.”

She adds a dollop of cream to her tea, ignores the sugar and stirs it before removing the tea bag. Now the string is completely wrapped into the handle of the spoon. Out of the corner of my eye I see her discreetly trying to untangle it.

We all have different skills, I think.

“Ma’am. Jones, I think…”

“Please. Just call me Lottie.”

“Lottie, okay. Well, Lottie, you’ve had one of the most fascinating lives I’ve ever encountered. A lot of people would like to hear your side of the story.”

I sit down and stir my own tea, without adding sugar or milk. My doctor says both are bad.

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“Your story is exactly what we do,” she says. “We investigate old crimes and compare what we know now with how they were reported at the time. You lost your job, your family and probably all your friends. And the names they called you were so terrible! The media behaved as if you were some kind of devil.’

She-devil. They actually called me that, along with ‘that female serial killer’ and sometimes ‘the psycho bitch’. It all happened before the internet. The era of tabloid journalism was a harbinger of things to come.

“How’s your tea?” I ask.

“Lottie, I want to tell the story of what happens when you are wrongly accused of a crime. You were tried and convicted by the public without ever being arrested, and I want to focus on what that was like for you.

“Why would I want you to dig all that up? The world has forgotten me. I moved on years ago.”

“Did you do that?” she says. Plum looks around my old kitchen, in the house where I live alone. For someone like her, Bluebell Lane probably feels like the end of the world.

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This girl has a snack. Good for her.

“Let me be very clear,” I say. “I don’t want this to come up again, and I don’t want a docuseries made about me.”

“I’m not going to blame you for the murders or say you should have been arrested. I want to acquit you once and for all. And just so you know, I plan to make the series anyway.”

That’s a new piece of information.

Plum has aquamarine eyes. Clear, translucent, beautiful. Long, natural eyelashes and rosy cheeks. The glow of youth radiates from every pore.

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For a moment I imagine the series she described. I, an accused murderer, am acquitted, acquitted, and acquitted. An older woman who was the victim of a system that got it all wrong.

But I don’t believe in fairy tales. If she made this show and put me all over the internet, it wouldn’t end like this. Not for me.

I get up. ‘Silly me, I forgot the napkins. But please continue, I am listening.”

“If you agree to an interview, we can do it here at your home. I’m flexible about the time, we can split it up into a few different interviews or do it all at once. Whatever your preference.”

“Do you live around here?”

‘In Seattle. But I can come down at any time, and I’ll bring a cameraman with me.”

“Good to know.” I reach into the corner, to the stand by the back door, and pick up my old umbrella. “Why don’t you show me some videos of what you did earlier?”

Plum sticks her head into her phone and scrolls looking for something else to show me. I walk behind her and lift the umbrella over my head.

She looks up.

Unfortunately for Plum, she sees it coming.

Cover and excerpt from TOO OLD FOR THIS by Samantha Downing. Text copyright (c) 2025 by Samantha Downing. Reprinted with permission from Penguin Random House. All rights reserved.

Too old for this will be published on August 12, 2025 and is available for pre-order now wherever books are sold.