An Edgar(R) Award Nominee for Best Novel Jesse Kellerman--the international bestselling author of The Executor and The Genius-- brings his prodigious talent to bear on a topic he knows well in this hilarious and surprising spin on the modern blockbuster thriller novel. Missing for months after a tragic boating accident, William de Vallée, the superstar thriller writer, is pronounced dead. His oldest friend, Arthur Pfefferkorn, receives the news with an unsettling mix of grief and envy. A middle-aged college professor with long-dead literary aspirations, Pfefferkorn can't help but feel outshone by his friend's success--especially since he married the woman Pfefferkorn loved. But now Bill is gone, and Pfefferkorn is there to comfort Carlotta in her time of grief. Reconnecting with de Vallée's widow makes more than one of his dreams come true . . . until it plunges him into a shadowy world of intrigue and double crosses, where no one can be trusted--and nothing can be taken seriously.

Gloria Mendez is thirty-six, single, and hopelessly in love with her oblivious boss, a soft-spoken loner twenty years her senior. Her friends might urge her to look for someone more her age, but Gloria knows the real thing when she sees it. So when he disappears while on vacation in Mexico, it's Gloria who goes in search of him. As she follows his trail deep into the desert, she runs face-first into a staggering history of betrayal and death: the wreckage of a hidden past. Carl Perreira was not the man she thought she knew - nor was he anything she could have imagined. Her journey will teach her as much about herself as it does about Carl. And as she plunges closer to his fleeing shadow, she will find herself fighting not only for the truth, but for her life.