Is a debut author’s blockbuster bestseller about to ruin her life? A glamorous book tour becomes a deadly cat-and-mouse chase in this new and captivating thriller by “master of suspense” (Publishers Weekly) and USA Today bestselling author Hank Phillippi Ryan.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Hank Phillippi Ryan’s All This Could Be Yours, which releases on September 9th 2025.
Debut sensation Tessa Calloway is on a whirlwind book tour for her instant bestseller, All This Could Be Yours. In a different city every night, Tessa receives standing ovations from adoring fans while her husband Henry and their two children cheer her on from their brand-new dream house.
But there’s a chilling problem with Tessa’s triumphant book tour—she soon discovers she is being stalked by someone who’s obsessed not only with sabotaging her career, but also with destroying her perfect family back home.
Tessa fears the fallout from an impossible decision she once made—what felt like a genuine deal with the devil—appears to be coming due. And she’s realizing that every high-stakes bargain comes with a high-stakes price. If Tessa can’t untangle who’s threatening to expose her darkest secrets, she’ll lose her career, her family—and possibly her life.
Excerpted from All This Could Be Yours, by Hank Phillippi Ryan. Minotaur Books, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
Chapter 6
Tessa blinked, as if what was in the hotel nightstand drawer might be an illusion, or imagined. But there it was. An ordinary item, in an ordinary place, but certainly not the place it was supposed to be. Tessa picked up the necklace. A locket. A slim rose gold heart, engraved with curlicues and flowers. Weightier than it looked at first. Not a trinket. A treasure. Someone’s left-behind treasure.
Some poor traveling mom, somewhere, was certainly distraught. Tessa almost felt guilty as she edged a fingernail between the sides. The locket popped open. Narrowing her eyes, she held it under the nightstand light. Inside, a tiny photograph, of . . . what? She held it closer to the bulb, squinting. Frowning. Then, feeling Nancy Drewish, she grabbed her phone and took a photo of it. Expanded the photo.
It was hard to tell, it was so small. But . . . parents? And a child. In front of some cabin-like structure at water’s edge.
Mother, father, daughter, in blue jeans—she guessed they were blue, the picture was black and white—and similar striped T-shirts. How old was this? Impossible to tell with the father’s haircut, military, maybe. Their T-shirts were timeless, as easily from a Sears catalog as from J.Crew. The setting could even be a fake backdrop. Black and white to look “vintage,” when it wasn’t.
Some copy editor at Waverly had flagged the word “nondescript” when Tessa used it in an early draft of All This, informing her that every- thing was describable. But that’s the first word that came to mind; ordinary, standard-issue. Three expressionless faces staring into someone’s camera.
It was no mystery what had happened, Tessa thought, creating a story about the picture, imagining the—wife? Who had left this locket behind. A tenderhearted nostalgic mom who had carried it for memories of home, to wake up in the morning and see her daughter and husband first thing and remind herself that her sacrifice was important because she was doing something necessary.
Or perhaps that wasn’t the true story at all. The only certainty was that someone had left it behind. Someone would miss it. Had probably already missed it.
Tessa frowned, feeling her forehead crease. Her own phone camera held hundreds of photos of the kids, a modern version of the locket. Was she a bad mom for not also wearing their family photo? And didn’t that make this even more important, even more precious, for its eccentricity?
She picked up the landline on the nightstand, ignored the inexplicable buttons, pushed zero.
“May I help you, Ms. Calloway?”
“Has anyone called about something they left behind in room 3016? I found a—”
“One moment, please,” the voice, not Graciela, turned brusque, interrupting. “I’ll connect you to lost and found.”
“No, no, I—” But Tessa was already in transfer limbo. She hung up, stashing her guilt, and called room service for her salad. The usual, Caesar with grilled chicken.
That 4:00 a.m. pickup loomed ominously closer, and Tessa could almost hear the clock ticking.
The people in the photograph didn’t look happy or unhappy, just . . . there. But this tiny photo was the representation of someone’s memory, a memory they considered worthy of documenting. Important enough to be kept close to their heart.
Still. It shouldn’t be difficult to get the locket returned to its rightful owner. The hotel certainly knew who had occupied this room right before Tessa, and it was unlikely that it had been left behind before that, because certainly the housekeeper would have discovered it. Though they hadn’t this time.
She picked up the house phone again. This time she knew the process. “Lost and found, please,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Calloway, lost and found is closed until tomorrow.”
How can lost and found be closed? “I found something in my room, I mean, someone left it. How can I—” she began.
“I’ll connect you to voicemail,” the clerk said. “They’ll return your call tomorrow at nine. Around nine.”
“But I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to leave early, before they’d—is there someone I can talk to tonight?” But the line had gone dead again.
She jammed her feet into her airplane shoes, made sure she had her key and the locket, and headed down to the lobby. On a mission. She was about to make someone happy, and that seemed nicely karmic. The world was making her happy, and she could pay it forward.
No Panera Guy in the hall, she reassured herself as she trotted toward the elevator and jabbed the button. It slid open, empty, and deposited her in the marble-floored lobby, still bustling at this time of night, with a pack of almost out of control wild-haired kids scampering and chattering in front of a man and woman in Disney T-shirts, clearly parents, clearly defeated.
She and Henry could not afford to take Linnea and Zack on trips “before the book”—that’s how she and Henry both thought of it, “before the book”—but as soon as she got home from this trip, they’d do it up big. She’d let Linnea choose their destination, give her some power. Or have a family meeting about it. She calculated their future happiness as she walked to the registration desk. All this could be yours, she whispered cross-country to Zack and Linny. I will make it happen.
“May I help you?” The desk clerk’s voice interrupted her thoughts. Her name tag said Darleen.
“Hi, Darleen, I’m Tessa Calloway,” she said, enunciating her full name, semi-hoping the woman might recognize her, like Graciela, and be extra helpful.
“And?”
Okay, then. “I think the last guest left something in my room, 3016? And I’m wondering—”
“Sure. Give it to me, thank you so much, that’s kind of you.” Darleen moused open her computer. “Lost and found is closed,” she said, as she typed, “but I’ll put it somewhere safe until morning.” She held out her hand. “Okay?”
It was almost as if the locket family was speaking to her, saying please don’t do this. We’ll be lost again. Tessa smiled at her sentimental storytelling. But the imaginary theoretical family was right, handing this left-behind treasure to a harried hotel clerk was certain to end unhappily.
“Listen, I’ll bring it down in the morning.” Tessa nodded, earnest. “Make it easier on you.”
She watched the clerk decide whether to let her leave with someone else’s property. Behind Tessa, a silver-haired epauletted pilot, obviously the leader of the uniformed airline pack trailing him, edged closer to the desk. He moved his roller bag closer to Tessa, encroaching on her space.
“Sure,” Darleen was saying. “Tomorrow’s good.” She turned to the pilot, instantly congenial. “Welcome, Captain. May I help you?”
Any other time, Tessa might have been annoyed, but in this case, his entitlement had worked in Tessa’s favor.
She scurried away, and with the necklace safely back in her pocket, clicked open her hotel room door again. Twenty minutes until her salad would arrive. The lights were still on, as she’d left them, and the streaming news channel chattering, voices of video strangers filling the silence. She muted it, considering what to do next. Then took another cell phone snapshot of the photograph, pursing her lips, perplexed. It seemed an invasion of privacy to post the whole thing. Zooming in on the husband only—she already thought of him as “the husband”—she then clicked another picture of him alone at the water’s edge. Then one of the mom, then the girl.
She popped her husband snapshot into Google Images, but the search brought up nothing as a match. Or even intriguingly close. And not for the mom, nor for the daughter. Time for a better search engine. Humans.
The lighting would be gruesome, but she had to try. She propped the phone against the nightstand lamp, clicked on to her live feed, watched the countdown, and began to talk.
TESSA LIVE
“Hey, you all, it’s me, Tessa. It’s been a while, I know, but we need to chat. Tonight I have a mystery for you to solve—and I think we can do it together. Anyone out there?”
Instantly the counter numbers in the upper left of her screen began to climb. Ten, then thirty-five, then so swiftly past fifty that she stopped checking.
“Here I am in fabulous Indianapolis, and what an amazing time at Excelsior Books for All This Could Be Yours. Loved seeing you all, and even a few moms with dreams! And I am so grateful for how much you are loving Annabelle.”
Hold up the book, she could imagine her agent’s voice, instructing. But she didn’t have a copy next to her.
“So you all, I’m on book tour, which is magical and fabulous and I truly adore it. But tonight, something happened, and I need your help.”
Tessa watched the “we can help!” comments appear on the phone screen, so unremitting she could barely read them. She held up the locket, dangling it from her fingers.
“Could this be yours? I found it in my hotel room. Someone left what must be a treasured family heirloom—it even has a photo inside, a photo of what looks like a family, a mother and father and daughter. And I’m crossing fingers you all can help me return it to its rightful owner.”
She saw herself on the screen, realized how impossible it would be to recognize the filigreed necklace. And no way to show the photos inside.
“I’ll only post a bit of the photo, since I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy, and I’ll put up the locket, too. But isn’t this tragic?”
She paused, looking at the heart-shaped jewelry in her palm, and the story behind the locket spooled into reality, as vividly as if she were watching a movie.
“We can all visualize some woman, probably a mom, a mom with dreams, harried and hassled and running as fast as she can, like we all do, don’t we? And in the midst of maybe a crazy-early plane, or some personal pressure we cannot even imagine, she leaves behind the most precious thing in her life.”
Tessa held up the locket again, the heart twisting at the end of the delicate chain, and watched the comments streaming in, the list racing by, emblazoned with heart emojis, crying faces, and hugs and puppies and flowers.
“We have to help her, dear readers. I know how it feels to be on the road, to be doing your best, and missing your family, and torn apart because you have no choice, no matter how happy you are, even if your dreams are coming true, that you are so tired, and so wrung out, and trying to juggle, and . . .”
Tessa paused, her eyes misting. Her heart twisted, just like the chain of the locket. She had a cell phone full of photos, sure, but what if Henry and the kids had given her something like this, to keep them close to her? What if she lost it? Their book-tour keep-sake, their magical connection? She’d be inconsolable. And this woman, wherever she was, must be, too.
“And oh, all of you, you get it, don’t you? You’re out there, too, doing what you need to do, and what have you sacrificed for it? What bargains have you made for it? When all you want to do is go home . . .”
And then the tears were wet on her cheeks and there was no way to stop them. She wiped them away with two fingers. Linny, elfin and sassy, who knows what was happening in her little head? And Zack, who’d revered Henry since he was an infant, or Henry himself, who existed through his unwavering belief that everything was always for the best. Her sweet family. Their ties were infinitely tenuous; a spiderweb, strong but vulnerable. So very, very vulnerable.
“Oh my goodness, you all. You have made me cry with your comments, and how wonderful you are, and how brave, and let’s find this Locket Mom, okay? We need to help her. We need to be there for her. Do you know anyone who wears this? Have you seen this? Could this even be yours?”
She held it up again, the burnished gold catching the glow of the lamplight.
“For her sake, for all of our sakes, we need to be in this together.”
She sobbed outright, her voice catching. Poor Locket Mom, she thought. Sometimes the world was so unfair.
“I know how you all feel, dear ones, and I am so embarrassed to cry, but you understand how I feel, and again, could this be yours? Locket Mom, are you out there? I am here for you, and we are all here for you, and we need to take care of each other and . . .”
As her voice trailed off, the comments blurred to an unending stream.
