Central Skagit Library District

"In the latest novel from New York Times bestselling author Linwood Barclay, a teacher's act of heroism inadvertently makes him the target of a dangerous blackmailer who will stop at nothing to get what he wants"--

"Oscar-winning actress Ardith Law is a Hollywood icon. Radiant at sixty-two, she is the epitome of glamour and a highly respected artist. But her success has come at a price: She has a strained relationship with her daughter, Morgan, who at thirty-eight still blames Ardith for putting her career before being a mother. Morgan is a successful plastic surgeon in New York City--and the distance from Ardith's Bel Air mansion is not lost on either of them....

The lawyer, the jeweler, the art critic, and the oil-company man...self-possessed, independent Lora Winter has had a child with each of them. But when one of these men drives up to her house with a fifth man in the car, Lora runs to hide. That's how this extraordinary novel opens - and by the time it ends, you'll have pieced together a masterful psychological jigsaw puzzle that is miles from a traditional crime novel, but whose desperate characters...

"When Cal's neighbor, Jim Kavanaugh, the owner and gifted vintner of an up-and-coming winery, is accused of murdering his wife, his freedom--and the grape harvest--is suddenly in jeopardy along with his reputation, and his business begins to slide. No gentleman farmer, this puts the rugged winemaker's property, his only financial asset, in play. When a blackmail plot is hatched against the owner of adjacent land, it begins to look like a brutal game...