Newton author Hank Phillippi Ryan’s new thriller is about lies, and it’s inspired by her own.

“It came from when I thought about how often I lied to my mother,” Phillippi Ryan said. “And I thought, what if she was lying to me, too? What if everything I thought about my family’s history was not true?”

Ryan launched her 17th book, “Mother Daughter Sister Stranger,” at The Allen Center in West Newton Tuesday evening, drawing in a crowd of local authors and readers. Cultivating that sense of community is the best part of a book launch, Ryan said.

“One of the things about being an author is that for essentially a year you’re completely alone, and when there’s a book launch—and this is my 17th—when there’s a book launch, you realize that we’re in a community of people who have the same dreams and the same hopes and the same delights,” Ryan said.

Attendees shared that sentiment.

“It’s really great to see so many authors,” said Wanda Reindorf, a Brookline resident and reader. “I’m so glad that people are reading.”

Newtonville Books provided the books for sale at the launch. Ryan had hosted launch parties there before, but was drawn to The Allen Center in West Newton as a venue after attending the Newton Cultural Alliance’s annual fundraiser there.

“I wanted to bring the bookstore to The Allen Center,” Ryan said. Mary Cotton, co-owner of Newtonville Books, said the party was a culmination of a longtime collaboration with Ryan.

“I have been hosting and selling books for Hank since her first book back in 2007, the same time my husband and I had taken over Newtonville books,” Cotton said. “Over the years, it is such a pleasure to see how much she has built and to come to the parties that she throws.”

Ryan said she hopes readers take away a sense of empowerment from her new story, which follows a woman whose sister goes missing, and whose entire family history unravels as a result.

“In every one of my novels, a strong, savvy, successful woman gets the rug pulled out from under her and needs to get her power back,” Ryan said. “So my books are about empowerment. They’re about loyalty. They’re about trust, and they’re about truth, and they’re about justice.”

That’s something she draws from her long career as an investigative journalist. Before she was a novelist, Ryan was a decorated reporter for Channel 7 News, having won 34 Emmys and 14 Edward R. Murrow Awards.

“I’ve been a television reporter for 40 years, and looking for justice and truth is what I did every day, Ryan said. “And that’s what I do in my novels.”