Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from My Roman Summer by Bruna De Luca, which releases on June 2nd 2026.

Sixteen-year-old Scottish-Italian Livia feels like an outsider, working in her ailing grandmother’s bar in Rome. Smug local boy, Guilio, works there too, and quickly becomes Livia’s nemesis. She is not going to be the cliché foreign girl who has a summer romance. But as Livia navigates family drama, newfound friendships and… Giulio, she starts to see the city (and herself) in a new light.

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The post Read An Excerpt From ‘My Roman Summer’ by Bruna De Luca appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Guest Book by Mae Marvel, which releases on June 2nd 2026.

The whole world believes Cosima Frank’s life has been a fairytale. Now she’s trying to live up to the overwhelming legacy left to her by her late mother, the Queen of Hollywood. As the pressure begins to build, Cosima does the only thing she can think of: run straight to the inn where her parents met and fell in love, intent on finishing her mother’s bucket list.

Edie Whitelock isn’t like anyone Cosima has ever met. She’s persistent enough to march up to Cosima’s door and provoke her to get out of bed and follow the disarming woman through the charming English village. Edie’s also on the run from her past, but she finds that she relishes bickering with the pretty Los Angeles princess a whole lot more than she expected. The two women couldn’t be more different, but they find themselves inexplicably drawn to each other.

Trapped indoors by thunderstorms, Cosima and Edie discover the inn’s guest book, whose entries date back more than fifty years—and inside it, a romantic treasure hunt left behind by a long-ago guest whose clues unexpectedly send them across England, Spain, and France on an adventure they hope will change both of their lives.

But sometimes the treasure you seek isn’t the one you find.

Chapter 1

“Once upon a time”—Cosima Frank swept the rain from her curls with a sigh—“lawyers knew how to manage an estate with a bit of flourish.”

She pressed her trench coat into Duncan’s outstretched hands and shook out her umbrella, spattering rain onto the marble floor.

“Is that so?” Ever the gentleman, he carefully hung up her coat for her in the alcove off the foyer.

“Haven’t you seen the movies? They’re supposed to gather the mourners together for a reading of the will where dark secrets come to light. Perhaps an elegant young woman faints. That sort of thing.”

“Your meeting with the attorneys didn’t go how you expected?” Duncan offered her his fond, paternal smile, which Cosima made an effort to return. All the small muscles of her face that made it possible to smile had grown stiff with disuse.

“At one point, I wasn’t sure if the gentleman from the title company was describing the Venice Beach lot Mother bought in the seventies or if he was casting a spell,” she said. Although I did learn that her various waterfront investments have appreciated nicely. No one can say Phoebe wasn’t savvy with her money.”

Duncan glanced toward the center of the foyer, where a three-story-tall pink marble fountain of an elephant, complete with gold saddle, dominated the space. “At times,” he said diplomatically.

Duncan was always diplomatic.

She followed him to her mother’s study, where they had been meeting in the afternoons. The routine had settled on the pair of them in the quiet of the massive Beverly Hills estate that Cosima’s mother had liked to call “the Castle.” Without its queen, there wasn’t the bustle of staff making rooms ready for guests anymore. There weren’t caterers, or a bartender coming to the back entrance to set up in one of the lounges for a gathering. There weren’t deliveries of flowers or dresses. No architects or moneymen or agents or managers or glittering, famous, beautiful people here, admiring a new painting or antique.

It turned out the Castle was only the Castle because of Phoebe. Without her, it was a collection of empty rooms.

The smallest one was this study, where Cosima and Duncan could still smell a thin vapor of her perfume and survey the chaos piled on her desk, feeling as though she would walk in at any moment to kiss Duncan on the neck.

They settled into their chairs, a wingback by the tiled fireplace for Duncan and an Eames that could take all of Cosima’s long legs without making her back sore.

“Were there many photographers at the gate?” He reached down and pulled two seltzers from a concealed fridge in the study’s breakfront.

“Fewer. The rain’s so bad today.”

The weather for the funeral had been obediently sunny, seventy degrees, and clear as crystal—Los Angeles obeying Phoebe’s whims, as usual. But it had been raining ever since, for three weeks straight. The drumming of the rain became a constant in the background while Cosima sat to be interviewed about her mother, the Queen of Hollywood, and how nothing in the world would be the same without her.

The tears of the world would end, she assumed, whenever the rain did. On the first sunny day, the planet would start to spin again, and with it Phoebe’s legacy, which Cosima had inherited so she could preserve it forever.

She was the Castle’s princess, after all.

Duncan placed his seltzer bottle on the edge of the overflowing desk, centering it on a silver coaster. He pulled out his phone and a pair of tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses that made a distinguished contrast to his salt-and-pepper hair and beard. When he leaned back, his shirt settled into a drape worthy of Robert Redford. “Are you ready?”

Cosima took a deep breath through her nose. She counted to four before exhaling over a slow eight counts to settle her tight stomach. She’d had a number of doctor’s visits and tests attempting to get to the bottom of her sharp stomach pain, only to have a kind physician suggest that she consider developing a mindfulness practice and try deep breathing. It didn’t work—her stomach still managed to twist itself into a pinching knot—but she figured the extra dose of oxygen would assist with the next set of tasks at hand. “What do we have today?”

Duncan tapped his phone. “I’m sending you a file with terms from the public library for their display of Phoebe’s papers.”

Cosima retrieved her tablet from her bag and swiped it awake. “Got it.”

“I already had the attorneys review them, and I accepted their edits. You just need to sign.”

Nodding, Cosima dragged the papers into her project organizer. “Next?”

“There’s an issue with the release of the budget for the endowed theater chair at UCLA. When I talked to the foundation CFO, she said what’s needed is a phone call to the bank, but you’re the only one authorized to talk to them.”

“Right.” Cosima made a note, adding it to the list for her assistant to schedule an appointment. She took another slow breath.

Duncan leaned back in his chair and fiddled with his heavy gold wristwatch. Her belly cramped again, this time because he was stalling, and she knew why.

“You’ve seen the stock reports,” he said.

This wasn’t a question. In her Burbank office, a high-definition wall-mounted monitor displayed the vagaries of the global market in real time. She had a phone and a tablet and a laptop, all of them connected to the internet. In addition, Cosima received a crisp butter-yellow cardstock folder every morning with her breakfast. It, too, contained a market update, among other briefings essential to the operations of Phoebe Frank Studios, better known as PFS. It was the same folder her mother used to review while eating her own breakfast.

“Power vacuums make the market nervous.” Her voice sounded far away.

“They do. On the upside, that means the market will settle out once a new CEO has been named.”

Once you name the new CEO, he meant.

Cosima’s mother had built PFS into an empire on the shoulders of her first project, Ship of the Cosmos, a low-budget film that she wrote, directed, and starred in as Captain Astra Saturnine. Ship of the Cosmos went on to become one of the biggest film franchises of all time. It spawned sequels and prequels, limited-series spin-offs and animated versions, comic books and novelizations, action figures, fast-food toy tie-ins, and conventions. For three decades, PFS had been synonymous with Ship of the Cosmos, even as the studio’s scope grew to constitute a significant portion of Hollywood’s continued output.

And yet Phoebe Frank, in what was possibly her first misstep, had not named a successor. Instead, she had charged Cosima with the knighting. Phoebe had called this a “compromise.” Cosima considered it a punishment, since it had come after she made it clear that she could not—or, in her mother’s view, would not—succeed Phoebe.

That last, horrible, monthslong argument with her mother was the first time Cosima had refused to do what Phoebe wanted.

It surprised them both.

Cosima often thought of her life as Phoebe’s daughter in terms of before and after. From her birth and appearance on the cover of People—swaddled in lace, cradled in her loving mother’s arms—until her graduation with a niche degree in the arts, her life had been a public performance of what it was to be the daughter of a famous creative. After the whirlwind of finals and graduation, Cosima had traveled, experimented, and dreamed of making something of her own. Then she’d come home to rest and regroup, only to be told that Phoebe needed her. Cosima’s advice was required. Her unique knowledge of Phoebe Frank Studios. How well she could anticipate what her mother would want done. How good she was at doing things Phoebe’s way.

It worked out well for Phoebe. For the stockholders, too—until Phoebe was gone.

Now, the global entertainment industry, the markets, the PFS licensing and franchise partners, the media, and even the internet cinephiles looked to Cosima for a decision that she’d already taken too long to make. They had expected her to deliver it like a puff of white smoke from the Vatican, perhaps. Or they’d looked for the name of the annointed to float from the Castle on the exhale of her mother’s last breath.

Duncan watched her for a long, quiet moment.

Her stomach pressed against her heart, her throat, and locked her voice up tight.

He sighed at the screen of his phone. “Do you want to talk about the garden project instead?”

She did not. She took a sip of seltzer, hoping it would remind her stomach to be a stomach rather than a bag of knives. “Of course. That sounds perfect.”

When he looked up from his phone, it was to smile at her with sympathy.

Duncan was wonderful. He’d always been wonderful, ever since Cosima’s mother met him on a jet boat in the French Riviera, where he had at least six heiresses and models fighting over him—but naturally he chose Phoebe, with her long legs and curly hair and big eyes. At that time, Phoebe’s fame was wildfire, but, telling the story, she’d liked to portray herself as though she were an awkward girl reading on the beach, noticed by a handsome rake.

Cosima had her own memories of that trip. She’d been four years old, just beginning to understand that there was a difference between her mother when she was being her mother and her mother when she was being “Phoebe Frank.” Cosima had liked it when her mother took her into the cold sea, holding her hand. She’d liked this tall man with his fascinating Scottish accent. He found a gold coin behind her ear and gave it to her, and he said it was real gold. She could still remember the way he crouched down, putting his kind eyes right at her level. He buckled her into a bright pink life jacket he’d bought for her in a beachside shop. It pressed underneath her chin when she sat down on his boat.

Duncan set his phone on the arm of the chair and removed his glasses. “Maybe we can reconvene in the morning. You’ve already had a long day putting out fires.”

Cosima looked out the window of her mother’s study at the sprawling landscape of native plants and quiet, flower-filled paths to the pool. The gardens had been Duncan’s intervention. A casual gardener in the way many Europeans were, Duncan had decided to cultivate plants and flowers as a way to cultivate his relationship with Cosima. The first time Cosima and Duncan’s gardens had been photographed for a magazine, she was sixteen. There had been several more features over the years, the product of writers and editors charmed by the duo and the oasis of California native plants they’d created.

At the height of Cosima and Phoebe’s arguments about the future of PFS, Duncan had used the garden to broker a ceasefire. He’d suggested to Phoebe that Cosima’s desire to build something of her own was equal to Phoebe’s but not identical. Perhaps a few calls could be made to support Cosima’s passions. Audiences might be interested in a new kind of gardening show, a stylish one filmed at the Castle. Many an empire began with a single audience, as Phoebe well knew. Cosima simply needed her own audience. If this grew into a younger, leaner sister studio to PFS? Well. It wouldn’t be surprising.

And so, the blow to Phoebe thus softened, Cosima came to be in charge of two projects. First, she was to handle the peaceful transition of power and the initiation of a new era for PFS so that everything might be done just the way Phoebe would want. Then, a few weeks from now, she would begin filming the pilot of An American Castle’s Garden.

PFS had already inked multiple streaming contracts and a global distribution deal for the new gardening show, somewhat losing sight of the “leaner” sister studio that had initially been imagined. Cosima’s studio now employed dozens of people who depended on her new passion and vision.

She missed gardening. It would have been nice to be out there, her knees and hands in the dirt, alone with her feelings.

“I’m fine, Duncan. Truly,” she said. “I do need to find a paper, since we’re here in Mother’s office.” She rose to her feet. Her arches hurt. “One of our producers wants it, something she said Mother put aside for her in her desk. A note from Scorsese he wrote after he saw Ship of the Cosmos.”

Her mother’s desk was a disaster, though Phoebe had always claimed to have a “system.” No one had been permitted to touch the teetering piles on top of it—not even Cosima. She didn’t know where to find a note from Scorsese, even if she’d had the urge to search for it. She trailed her fingers across the stacks of paper and wished it were the end of the day so she could take off her shoes and curl up in her bed like a small, soft animal.

Instead, she started taking apart the piles, flipping each item over, one by one. There were papers falling off the desk, sliding under it, drifting onto her mother’s desk chair. Duncan rose to his feet. “I’ll just give you a hand.”

“I’ve got it.” She reached out to steady a stack before it collapsed but miscalculated, sending it tumbling to the floor.

“Shit.”

A sheet of her mother’s canary-yellow stationery fluttered to the carpet between her feet. Cosima crouched down to retrieve it, her arches throbbing.

Her hand stilled over the paper.

“What is it?” Duncan asked.

It was a list. One she’d written down for her mother, who dictated the items to her when the doctors made it clear Phoebe was intractably ill despite her efforts to hide it.

“Mother’s au revoir list.” She tried to keep her voice neutral as she picked the paper up. If she sounded distressed, Duncan would try to help. If Duncan tried to help, Cosima would end up with one more thing to do.

This list of her mother’s was the reason why Cosima had stayed the night at the Getty, curled up in a sleeping bag in the dark beside Phoebe with a laughing Rembrandt looking down at them. Why she’d skydived, buckled to an instructor who smelled like cold air, the wind impossibly loud in her ears. They’d met a “nose” in Paris, who bottled a scent for the two of them. One by one, they’d drawn a line through each of the items, until the time came when her mother needed to rest and be taken care of.

Because it was Phoebe’s list, it also included her wish for the Castle to be converted from their private home to a center for the performing arts. Who could deny her such a generous bequest? The Castle, of course, had never been for Cosima or Duncan. It was a decadent showpiece, Phoebe’s homage to Hollywood. Phoebe’s.

Cosima was surprised to see an item left on the list. She’d forgotten about it.

Stay at Gregory Place, it said.

An inn, located in a tiny village in England. A long time ago, in the 1980s, it was where Phoebe met and fell in love with Cosima’s father, a dashing Formula One driver who died in a race when Cosima was in preschool. Phoebe had wanted to have the “full-circle experience” of visiting the inn together with Cosima. She’d said Gregory Place was “magic.”

Duncan cleared his throat. “It was such a lovely thing for the two of you to share.”

Was it? Cosima bit back the comment, feeling awful for even having the thought.

Duncan read the list over her shoulder. “Ah. A trip over the pond would be a pleasant escape for you once you’ve made your announcement to the stockholders and we’ve wrapped up filming season one. I was already planning on opening my estate in Dundee for a visit. You could tick this off the list, then come up and breathe clean Scottish air and put pen to paper for ideas for season two.”

“Yep.” Cosima rubbed her thumb over the paper. Her lungs were too tight. Her stomach roared into her throat. “Good idea.”

“Are you all right, darling?”

She closed her eyes, annoyed she’d let her tone be short. “Yes, I’m sorry. The day was too long for these shoes. You’re hearing my arches and pinky toe, not me.” She gave him a practiced smile.

But she wasn’t half the actress her mother had been. When Duncan quickly turned his head toward the dark window, she witnessed his mask slip, his mouth bracketing with grief. All at once, her vision telescoped, framing Duncan’s face at the pinpoint end of a long black tunnel. Cosima shook her head, trying to make the tunnel disappear, but his faraway face didn’t change. From here, she could hear the water in the elephant fountain. She could smell the familiar pompelmo fragrance her mother liked to infuse into the air.

She had never known any other home but the Castle.

Cosima didn’t know why it was still so important—always and forever the most important thing—to make her mother happy.

Her mother was dead.

Duncan turned toward her again. His fond smile had been restored. “We’re both knackered.” He started out of the office, but before he went through the doorway, he squeezed her shoulders. “Breakfast at Lulu’s?”

She nodded, or she didn’t. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

Eventually, with a final pat, he left.

Cosima came back into her body enough to notice her feet hurt too much to stand. In that, at least, she had been truthful with Duncan. She collapsed onto the Eames ottoman, staring at the mess she’d made of her mother’s desk. Her phone and tablet buzzed and chimed with notifications while her eyes started to burn with the tears she would not shed.

When her stomach cramped, hard, taking her breath away so completely she couldn’t even gasp, she dropped the list in her lap and picked up her phone. She watched one notification after another slide up the screen while her hand vibrated.

She opened the phone’s browser.

With a fingertip, she filled the boxes with the required information at each step. Her payment confirmed with another notification. Shucked-off heels in hand, she walked barefoot past the elephant fountain, up two flights of stairs, and came back down with luggage she’d packed in the dark, her heart alternately pounding and freezing in place, her stomach so tight it felt numb.

The last thing she did was strike through the final item on her mother’s list and set the paper down on Duncan’s chair.

Then she ran from the Castle. Escaped, really—a princess dashing through the pouring rain into the night.

Not to find magic. Magic didn’t exist anymore.

From The Guest Book: A Novel by Mae Marvel. Copyright © 2026 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Guest Book’ by Mae Marvel appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Not a Strong Enough Word by Allie Samberts, which releases on June 2nd 2026.

Five years apart. One unfinished love story.

Scarlett Frye was once a literary genius. With two bestselling novels, a million-dollar book deal, and a love story of her own, she had it all—until the pressure broke her. Five years ago, she canceled her book tour, shredded her contract, and disappeared. She left everything behind, including Ryan Whitlock, the editor who believed in her… and the man she loved.

Now, after years of healing, she’s ready to write again.

For Ryan, Scarlett’s disappearance wasn’t just a professional loss, it was personal. It shattered his heart and sent him into a slump. That is, until an anonymous manuscript lands on his desk. The writing is brilliant, raw, and achingly familiar—it can only be Scarlett’s.

As fate brings them back together, Scarlett reluctantly agrees to let Ryan edit her comeback novel, even though it means working with the man she never stopped loving. Old passions reignite, but when pressure builds and buried secrets resurface, Ryan fears history will repeat itself.

Scarlett walked away once. But as they navigate love, loss, and the weight of the past, she and Ryan must be strong enough to rewrite their story before it’s too late.

Chapter 1 – Scarlett

“It’s the best thing you’ve ever written.”

I’m a writer. It is my job to combine words into sentences. Or, at least, it was back when I was doing it regularly. But I still can’t think of a better combination of words in the English language than the seven that come breathlessly from my agent’s mouth the minute I answer the phone.

“Five years in the making,” I grumble. I might be on cloud nine, but I can’t resist a little self-deprecation. I’m fishing for another compliment. Sue me.

“Worth the wait,” Trina rewards me again. She sniffles, and I hear the soft sound of tissues in the background.

“Are you crying?” I ask incredulously.

She’s silent for a moment as the tissue makes noises against the phone. Then, without warning, she wails, “It’s just so good.”

I can’t help it—I laugh. It’s a harsh sound, raspy from disuse, and it almost hurts my chest. But this all feels so perfect. Even sad little me wants to jump for joy.

It’s been five long years of beating myself up over blank pages. Five long years of depression, reclusion, lots of therapy, and some medication. Five long years of wishing I could call my former friends but being too afraid to be shunned again.

My agent, Trina, is the only one who has stuck with me through it all. I still can’t believe she didn’t want to drop me completely, but the way she put it, I was her first writer. I guess that means something. That and the royalties from my early books are still making her enough money to pay for groceries, so it’s in her best interests to keep me around. I like to think it was more than that. A sense of loyalty, maybe. Or friendship. Genuine care and concern. But who knows.

Either way, she’s still with me. She loves the new draft. This might be my way to get back in the game.

“Before I launch into anything else, I need to ask if you’ve eaten today,” Trina says, dragging me back to reality.

“Uh…” I eye the dirty dishes that have piled up in my sink. It’s unclear which is the most recent or what was on it. I’ve barely been able to clean my small condo since I started furiously writing about a month ago. Normally, this would be a concerning signal that I’ve relapsed into a depressive episode, but there’s also an old adage that a writer can have a finished draft or a clean house. This is definitely a product of the latter.

I must hesitate too long because Trina sighs. “Please get some food. We can talk later.”

“No,” I say quickly. “I’ve been waiting for two days for your feedback. If I have to wait any longer, I’ll burst.”

“You need food.”

I grab a piece of bread and hold the phone close to the toaster as I noisily press the lever down. “Hear that? Toast. I’ll eat it while we talk. I promise.” Even a year ago, I’d have lied and told her I had eaten recently so we could get on with the conversation, but she’s known me for too long now. She can see right through my bullshit. And besides, she’s right. I need to do a better job of taking care of myself, especially if I want to sell this book.

She hums, unconvinced. “Do you have anything to put on it, or are you just going to eat dry-ass bread? You need more than refined carbs, Scarlett.”

Sighing, I look around my small kitchen for anything else that’s edible. A bunch of bananas I did actually buy only a few days ago. Two empty takeout containers. An apple core…gross. I collect that and the takeout containers and throw them into the garbage.

Jackpot. “Cookie butter,” I say triumphantly when I see the container that my little bit of tidying up revealed.

“You need protein,” Trina protests.

“I’ll go to the store after we talk. Promise. Now, please. I am begging you. Tell me you think you can sell this book.”

“I think I can sell this book.” I can picture her bright red painted lips breaking into a huge smile when she says it. “In fact, I know I can. JMP has acquired a new press and—”

“No,” I cut her off. “Absolutely not. I’m not going back to JMP or any of their subsidiaries. Find somewhere else.”

Now I can just about picture those red lips pressing into a thin, frustrated line. “Scarlett—”

“No,” I repeat, more firmly this time. My toast pops up out of the toaster as if punctuating the sentence. I’m seriously lacking clean plates, so I toss it onto a paper towel and use the spoon that was resting in the jar to spread a generous helping of cookie butter on top.

“It’s a totally separate imprint, despite the acquisition. New editors. Way better vibe. I’ve been working with one of the editors, Casey, on another project. He’s great.”

“Casey is not a new editor,” I say around a mouthful. “I remember him from JMP.”

“Well, yes,” Trina says slowly. “He came over from JMP to help get the ball rolling. But as far as I know, he’s the only one who made the move. And more importantly, his wish list has ‘highly emotional literary fiction’ right on there.”

She’s not going to let this go. Trina might be the only person in the industry who is more stubborn than me. It’s one of the reasons we work so well together, but it sure is infuriating when I try to put my foot down and get blocked by her logic and reasoning.

“There are hundreds of imprints. Can’t we go somewhere else? A small press, maybe?”

I don’t want to say it out loud, but I’m not looking for another million-dollar deal. They don’t just hand you a million dollars and say, Go write a book! No. They need to make their money back, and then some. Which means press tours and more books to generate more interest… It was too much pressure the last time, and it ended in me walking out of JMP’s offices with the tatters of my torn-up pending contract for three new books in my hands and a broken heart in my chest. Not only did my career die that day, but I left the state and walked away from my ex-boyfriend, another one of JMP’s editors. I spiraled into a deep depression, lost all my friends, my family—who had never been supportive of my career in the arts—more or less disowned me. And the rest is history.

My stomach sours at the memory, even five years later. I take a giant bite of toast to fill the emptiness.

“This is highly emotional lit fic, Scarlett. It’s right up Casey’s alley. Not to mention that I know for a fact that they’re looking for a big name to put them on the map.” She pauses for a moment as if considering whether or not to continue. But, of course, she does. “And you need the money. Or…” She draws out the word, and I already know I’m not going to like what she’s going to say next. “We could shop it around. You’d probably get several offers. It’d go to auction…”

The very thought of this book going to the highest bidder sends a shiver down my spine. But I’m also probably about two months away from losing this apartment if something doesn’t turn around. Not that I’d be sad to move out, but lacking any friends or family left in my life, I don’t really know where I’d go.

“You can’t live with me,” Trina singsongs into the phone as if she read my mind. “I have boundaries.”

“So do I,” I fire back. “I’m not crawling back to JMP or this new imprint with my tail between my legs.”

I had signed my first deal with JMP as a starry-eyed twenty-five-year-old fresh out of my MFA program with a novel on my hard drive and ten more in my heart. They made my debut a bestseller. And my sophomore novel hit just about every list, too. But when they started asking for more faster without any regard for the sleepless nights, weeks away from home doing interviews and signings, and constant stress they were putting me under, I broke. Two years after I signed my first deal, they tried to ploy me with a better one to soothe the hurt caused by the first. The thought of even less sleep and a worse work-life balance than I already had nearly pulled me all the way under.

And when all of your relationships are tied up in an industry where image is everything, the optics of being associated with the crazed, depressed, sleep-deprived writer who is tearing up six-figure contracts on her way out the door isn’t great.

Trina knows all of this, of course. She was there. She’s maybe the only one who supported my decision when I resurfaced two years later. Which is why it surprises me that she’d even suggest going back to the place that caused this whole mess to begin with.

“It’s been five years,” she says gently. Almost as if she doesn’t want to poke the bear. “It’s a new world. People are demanding work-life separation, and this new publisher respects that. This press is said to be better for authors. That’s in their branding, which I’m assuming is why JMP acquired them. You weren’t the only one with an issue, Scarlett.”

“No, but I was the only one who burned a million-dollar deal to the ground.”

“Right,” she affirms. “But to be fair, they didn’t hand out many million-dollar deals, so there weren’t that many to burn.”

“I don’t think that makes me feel better,” I mumble. I take another bite of toast to prevent myself from saying something I’ll regret.

“Look, they want a fresh start. So do you. I get where you’re coming from, but this could actually work in our favor.”

The giant bite of toast scrapes against my dry throat as I try to swallow. I fill a relatively clean glass with water to wash it down. “What do you mean?”

“Everyone loves a comeback story. Especially readers.”

“Are you talking about the same readers who took to the internet to talk shit about me in droves?” I remind her. “Their memories are long.”

“Which is why I am going to suggest something a bit unorthodox.” She says it like a warning, and I brace myself for impact. “I want to submit this to Casey under a new pen name. When he tells me he’s interested—which he will—we’ll reveal who you really are before anything is signed. By then, they’ll want the book enough to go along with this. We’ll meet with their marketing team to come up with a timeline for releasing the information about who really wrote it. Everyone will have fallen as much in love with this book as I have, and the reveal will create another uptick in sales because you’ll be forgiven.”

“Or they’ll buy copies to burn in effigy,” I interject.

“Sales are sales!” she trills.

“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one.”

I poke a finger under the pile of dark hair that passes for a messy bun to scratch my head as I tip my eyes up to the ceiling in thought. It’s a big risk, and it’s a little bonkers, but it’s also brilliant. I wouldn’t be the first author to come back from disgrace. And I certainly wouldn’t be the first well-known author to publish something under a different pen name. Worst-case scenario: If Casey rescinds a deal when he finds out who I am, I’m right back where I started. With the added bonus of shoving it in Trina’s face with a nice I told you so dance to ensure she never submits anything of mine to JMP or its subsidiaries ever again.

This business won’t break me again. I can’t let it.

“Fine,” I finally say. “This better not backfire.”

“It won’t.” Trina can barely hide the glee in her voice. I hear a keyboard clicking in the background. My heart skips a beat at the thought that she might have had everything ready to send off and was just waiting for my approval. Is it out there already?

“Don’t worry.” She reads my mind again. “I wouldn’t send it with you on the phone. No one needs that level of anxiety.”

I breathe out a sigh of relief as my shoulders slump forward. “Thank you.” I lean against the counter and idly tap the pointer finger of my free hand against it. “What’s this new acquisition called anyway?”

“Anastasios Press,” she says distractedly.

I snort. “Like the Greek name meaning resurrection?”

“Like the name of its publisher,” Trina corrects. “But that definitely feels like a sign.”

“I don’t believe in signs,” I say as a knock sounds at my door.

“I ordered you a burger,” she explains. “It should be there now.”

My cold, black heart swells just a little at her kindness. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“If you had said no, I might have sent fried Brussels sprouts.”

“You ordered it before I said yes,” I counter.

There’s silence for a moment.

I open my door, and sure enough, a Styrofoam container is sitting on my doorstep. The smells coming from it make my mouth water despite the threat of Brussels sprouts. “Good thing I said yes, then.”

“I knew you would. I ordered it before I even called you. How do you think it got there so fast? Now, go eat. I have work to do.”

As we hang up, I’m filled with an excitement almost as pervasive as the rumbling in my empty stomach. If Trina thinks they’ll offer me a deal, she’s probably right. She’s never been wrong before, and I doubt her skills have diminished in the past five years while my own have been languishing.

It feels good to have a plan again. I basically wrote that draft on a wing and a prayer, but knowing Trina believes in it gives me some hope that I might actually be able to get back to writing. And, more importantly, that I might be able to love it again.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, which releases on June 2nd 2026.

Eunice Carter, assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, has her sights set on the one and only Lucky Luciano, head of New York City’s five largest organized crime families. Other prosectors have tried to bring down Lucky, but they’ve all focused on the crime syndicate’s traditional businesses—bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing—or tax evasion. No one has thought to approach the mob through its role in prostitution. Until Eunice. But she can’t get Luciano alone.

Polly Adler has worked long and hard to build up her high-class brothel business. Her client list is filled with well-known names, both the famous and the infamous, who all know her booze is top-notch, her music first-rate, her food exquisite, and her girls the best. But Lucky has gone too far, putting her girls in danger, and Polly finally sees the chance to end his reign once and for all.

Together, Eunice and Polly fashion a case utilizing a network of women. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, they assemble evidence bit by bit, under the nose of the man they’re trying to convict. It is this very alliance—of two women from vastly different worlds—that launches the most sensational trial New York City has ever seen.

Chapter Three

Polly

New York, New York

April 4, 1935

The sharp clip of heels on concrete echoes throughout my cell, growing louder with each step, and I brace myself. The fast tempo isn’t the lazy thunk of a guard’s boots or even the confident, slightly bored stride of a lawyer’s dark tan Derby shoes. No, the staccato, metallic sound is unusual for the corridors of the 30th Precinct Station House, and yet, I should be able to identify it. After all, I’ve spent many a long hour listening to the clatter of shoes as they cross bedroom floors to engage in all manner of debauchery.

I start to get concerned, and then I have it. Only the heel of a woman’s oxford pump could make that sort of solid but somehow dainty rat-a-tat-tat. With its elegant, womanly heel curving into a narrow point and its sensible perforated top designed to resemble a man’s oxford dress shoe, the oxford pump is the shoe of a woman who stands between two worlds. The shoe of a woman who means business but hasn’t entirely surrendered her femininity. Among other things.

But now I’m even more curious. Because it’s strange that the sort of person who’d wear those shoes would be in this jail. The 30th Precinct Station House is the place for the drug addicts and drunks and streetwalkers and thieves who’ve been hauled in; even I don’t really belong here, and neither do my girls. Unless, it comes to me, the woman in the oxford pumps is a rare female lawyer. Who else would have access to jail cells in the 30th Precinct Station House?

With this thought, a new sort of worry sets in. Could she be here for me? When I was booked into the station, the charge was listed as pandering, or “facilitating prostitution.” I’ve batted away this charge time and time again, but I haven’t heard a peep from the cops or my lawyer since. Even when I asked to call my attorney. What if I’m being held here on pandering charges, but they’re really planning on squeezing me for information on Dutch? Do the cops know that he and his thugs were in that hotel suite with us—just before Coll was murdered?

My heart begins thudding in time with her step. Not that an onlooker could tell. Should the unkempt detainee slouched against the cinder block wall in the cell abutting mine wake up and look in my direction, she’d see a petite, well-manicured, composed woman of an indeterminate age in sky-high heels. I’d seem out of place among the common criminals surrounding me, with the exception of my girls, of course. And they’ve been placed in cells scattered around the jail, so we aren’t close enough to talk.

I pull my fur stole tight around my shoulders like a shield. I’ve worked long and hard to build up my business—traveled far from Russia with its poverty and its pogroms and endured far worse on the shores of this so-called Golden Land—and I have no intention of returning to a desultory existence. Just like I have no intention of a life without the regular feel of a fur stole on my cheek.

So when the clatter of heels grows louder and abruptly stops in front of my cell, I do not look up. Leaning against the hard steel bars that constitute one of the walls of my cell, I keep my eyes firmly fixed on the dingy gray cell floor before me as if there’s no one there at all.

A long moment ensues. A powdery lemon scent drifts into my cell—could it be Charles of the Ritz’s new Jean Naté?—and I learn something else about the woman outside my cage. Her fragrance, decidedly not floral or fussy, is worlds away from the heavy, spicy, sometimes musky perfumes my girls wear. Or the distinctive Chanel and Lanvin concoctions chosen by the few select grand dames who frequent my house. It is the scent chosen by a woman with means who intends to be taken seriously.

Neither of us speaks for a long moment. Finally, she clears her throat. “Miss Adler?”

There, between the steel-gray bars of my cell, I peer first at her shoes: two-toned oxford pumps. I have to suppress a self-satisfied smile. I knew it. Working my way upward, I take note of the sensible stockings and the navy worsted wool skirt, the coordinating jacket cinched at the waist with a cordovan leather belt that matches her shoes. All as I expected for a woman lawyer.

Then my eyes reach her attractive face with its symmetrical features, arched brows, and stern lips, and nothing is as I guessed. Because the woman standing before me is the rarest of creatures. Not only is she a woman in a man’s world, but she’s a colored woman in a white man’s world. I’ve forged my way in a man’s world, too, but nothing quite like this.

“Who’s asking?” I answer when my eyes meet hers.

My tone is barbed, because I’ve got to be very, very careful to whom I speak and what I say. I’m no stranger to getting pinched, but the more I think about it, the stranger this latest arrest seems. The timing on the heels of Dutch and his men rushing out to witness the shoot-up of Mad Dog Coll, for instance, which I know did happen, because I’ve heard the guards natter on about it. The way in which the Algonquin lobby had been cleared out and the cops ready for us, as another example. Either I’m being set up to turn on Dutch, maybe for the role he played in the murder of Mad Dog, or someone identified me as the Polly Adler on the way to an assignation with my girls at the Algonquin Hotel and really has it out for me. Regardless, I’ve got to protect myself, and that includes not becoming a rat.

“Assistant District Attorney Eunice Carter,” the woman answers.

A colored female assistant district attorney? I thought I’d never see the day. In fact, it occurs to me that the only one I’ve ever heard of is the woman Dewey hired for his special group of lawyers dedicated to fighting the Mob. My stomach lurches at the thought that this Eunice Carter could be one of Dewey’s and that she might be here specifically to get me to talk about Dutch. Why else would she come here now?

Even if this Eunice Carter doesn’t know that I’ve interacted with Dutch, and even if she’s not one of Dewey’s special twenty, the fact that an assistant district attorney is here to talk to me isn’t good news. It means that this was no normal police roundup. Or maybe that I’m no normal inmate.

I will myself to stay still, stay silent, and I remind myself that it isn’t necessarily about Dutch. After all, the name Polly Adler is known in and of itself, and arresting me for pandering is a feather in the cap for any cop or assistant district attorney. I must wait for this unusual woman to play her cards.

She’s patient and steely, though, and can play the waiting game, too. Our eyes are locked—hers deep, dark brown and mine a coppery shade. Just when I think I might break first, she says, “I’m here to talk to you about your work.”

“And what work would that be?” I ask, trying to make my face the picture of innocence. I will give up nothing to this woman.

“I understand you run a house of prostitution,” she says matter-of-factly, gesturing down the row of jail cells. “In fact, I think a few of your girls might have been brought in with you.”

“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about.” I shake my head as if her comment is ludicrous.

“Actually, I’ve heard that you run the most prestigious house of prostitution in the city. Apparently, you’re so famous that the phrase ‘going to Polly’s’ has become a euphemism for engaging in the sort of illicit fun you offer.”

I will not be lured in by her compliments; I wasn’t born yesterday.

When I don’t speak, she continues. “Miss Adler, I am not here to gather evidence for the pandering charges that have been lodged against you. I’m only interested in learning how your business operates. I promise.”

She seems earnest, and honestly, I’m relieved that she’s not asking any questions about Dutch or the Mob. But it’s clear this Eunice Carter doesn’t understand anything about me or my business if she thinks I’ll roll over so easily. I keep my lips sealed.

“Miss Adler, I’d be grateful for any information you might be willing to share. It must be a thrill to run an establishment as well-known as Polly’s, and quite exciting for the girls who work there.” She pushes on, a pleading note in her voice.

Here she goes with the flattery again. I’ve got to shut this down. “Assistant District Attorney Carter,” I say, enunciating every syllable. “I don’t know a thing about running a ‘house of prostitution.’ My arrest is a big mistake. I’m just a lady who was out on the town for a few drinks with some friends. But I will tell you something for nothing. No girl wakes up in the morning wishing to spend her life as a whore.”

Excerpted from A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray Copyright © 2026 by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Rainy Day Bookshop by RaeAnne Thayne, which is out June 2nd 2026.

Sandwiched between caring for her mother and rebuilding the relationship with her estranged daughter, Emma, Rosie Lucas’s life is full. In the best way. With Emma and her 3-year old daughter, Olive, back home, Rosie has a partner for The Rainy Day Bookshop, the family business, and a chance to fix the past. What she doesn’t have time for is a romantic relationship. And even if she did, Andrew Morgan is the last person she’d choose. Not only is he an arrogant and reclusive writer, but he’s a single dad with two young kids. She’s already been there, done that.  Still as an irresistible flirtation builds between them, he becomes her unexpected confidante on the distance Rosie can’t seem to overcome with Emma, a secret she can’t quite unravel… 

Emma isn’t proud of her past. But she’s pulled herself up by the bootstraps, caring for her own daughter, and protecting her mom at all costs. Just as she always has. She never told Rosie what she saw all those years ago and she never will. But some secrets refuse to stay buried, and sometimes the truth is more shocking than fiction. Rosie and Emma will have to navigate an unimaginable path forward. Together. 

EXCERPT

Excerpted from The Rainy Day Bookshop, by RaeAnne Thayne. MIRA Books, 2026. Reprinted with permission.

Emma walked inside the bookstore and was momentarily speechless. All she could think was ew.

She hadn’t been in here in nearly a decade and it looked like not one single thing had changed. The bookstore seemed trapped in another era, with fluorescent lights, dingy paint the color of old bandages, and crowded, claustrophobia-­inducing aisles stacked with dusty books.

Olive looked around. “This place is messy.”

That was one word for it. Emma could think of several others, none of which were appropriate to say in the presence of her three-­year-old child.

“We’re in here,” Rosie called out.

Still holding Olive’s hand, Emma made her way to the office that ran along the rear wall. Dust motes floated like tiny shards of gold in the light coming through the front windows. She might think them pretty under other circumstances. Circumstances where she had not found herself suddenly responsible for turning a profit out of this cluttered, disorganized pit of despair.

Inside the office, she found her mother trying to move a chair so Sylvia’s wheelchair could fit at the computer desk.

“Did you see the play area when you came in?” Sylvia asked. “I keep old books I find at Goodwill and yard sales for kids to read while they’re in here. They can even take them home if they want. It’s our own version of a Little Free Library.”

“That’s nice. A play area is a good idea,” Emma said as she exchanged a look with her mother. Wasn’t a bookstore supposed to sell books?

“It gives the children somewhere to hang out in the store so they don’t pull everything off the shelves, plus keeps them occupied while their parents shop for books,” Sylvia said. “The toys may be outdated. I only have some blocks, a couple of trucks and a play kitchen I bought at a yard sale. The kids seem to enjoy it anyway.”

“Maybe Olive can play there sometimes while you’re working,” Rosie said, that anxious note in her voice again.

Her mother was trying so hard to make sure Emma was comfortable. Her eagerness made Emma’s throat feel tight and achy.

“That will be great,” she said, meaning the words.

Olive was the main reason she was here in Wood Briar. For her daughter’s entire life, Olive had spent more time in day care than with her own mother. Emma had been busy working or going to school, though she tried her best to juggle her responsibilities around her daughter’s schedule and take mostly online classes, where she could do the schoolwork while Olive was in bed.

Her daughter was smart, healthy, well-­adjusted. But in her nearly four years, she had already been through eight day care situations.

In another year, she would be heading to kindergarten, then grade school. She was growing up far too fast. Emma wanted the chance to be with her more and to have her enjoy as much time as possible with her grandmother and great-­grandmother.

Finding good quality childcare was the single hardest thing Emma had to do as a single mother. Harder than staying up all night with her when Olive was ill, even after a long shift at work. Harder than the constant grinding worry about finances. Harder than the equally grinding effort to stay sober so she could be the mother her daughter deserved.

Olive’s father was not in the picture whatsoever. Depending on her mood, Emma found that state of affairs either far more simple or much more complicated.

Most of the time, she thanked her lucky stars that she didn’t have to deal with Kevin Hollis on the daily.

Sometimes, though, she couldn’t help thinking how much easier her path would be if she had someone else to help carry the relentless parenting load.

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This is how Claire Fuller sets the stage for her sixth novel, Hunger and Thirst.

Ursula Major is no stranger to an untethered existence. Her early days were spent moving from place to place as her young mother eked out a meager existence playing music. When Ursula was just 8 years old, however, her mother unexpectedly died. The remainder of her formative years were spent in the care system, bouncing back and forth between foster homes and children’s homes.

Now a young adult, aged 16, Ursula wants to take charge of her life. She has a steady job working in the mail room of a local art school. Her social worker found her a bed in a halfway house, Yet she longs for a more stable home. She is desperate—hungry—to belong.

Enter Sue, a fiercely wild young woman who becomes the closest thing to a best friend Ursula has ever known. Sue convinces their co-worker Vince to let Ursula become his roommate—not in a rented apartment or shared flat, but squatting in an abandoned house known as the Underwood. At first, Ursula embraces her newfound independence, but the more time they spend in the house, the stranger things become. Sue begins pushing Ursula to do something dramatic and unforgivable, and when she finally acts on these dares, things spiral out of control.

Hunger and Thirst is gripping from the very first sentence and the success of the novel hinges on two literary devices: the structure and the murky line between what is real and what is not. The story is told by Ursula from the present day, flashing back to that fateful summer at The Underwood. Now a famously private sculptor who goes by the name Uschi, she is forced to privately recall these events when she learns of an upcoming documentary that chronicles the experience for public consumption. This juxtaposition of Ursula’s present with her past makes for an intriguing read.

Fuller leaves the reader questioning if Ursula’s version of these events is the truth she believes it to be. A thread of constant second-guessing is woven through the novel, echoing the same question over and over: What really happened? This technique is incredibly effective at pulling the reader into the story, making the book extremely difficult to put down.

Each page builds on the last to create an all-consuming world and cast of characters. Even with the potentially speculative elements of the story—which you must read to learn about—the novel reads as authentic and believable. Perhaps this is due, in part, to the connections to the author’s own life. Fuller herself says: “Of all my novels it’s the one that has the most of me in it.” Hunger and Thirst is set in the town where she once resided, in the art school she once attended, and even in the squat where she once lived.

One of the most interesting aspects of this story is this house as a character itself. The novel echoes—both overtly and through implication—some of horror’s most iconic works, including The Shining. The Underwood gives everyone who enters an unsettled feeling not altogether unlike The Overlook Hotel—a whisper of something unnatural, a wild impulse, or a gut instinct that warns them away. Fuller even plays on specific details from the film, like the squeaky voice and pointed finger Danny Torrence uses for his creepy imaginary friend Tony. In the course of the novel, Ursula’s friend Sue even compares the house’s influence to Hitchcock’s infamous film Psycho, saying: “That’s how the Underwood makes me feel. You must feel it too. Like I want to tear the place down and break my own rules.”

Hunger and Thirst is an exploration of the lengths humans will go to in order to quench their hunger and thirst to belong. Some may say this extended metaphor, as well as the literal incorporation of hunger and thirst into the story, are perhaps a bit on the nose—but it really works. If you are looking for a striking new work of literary horror, a psychologically twisted coming-of-age tale, Claire Fuller delivers.

Hunger and Thirst is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of June 2nd 2026.

Will you be picking up Hunger and Thirst? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis

From the celebrated author of Bitter Orange and Swimming Lessons comes an “atmospheric, psychologically vivid, and unputdownable” new novel of complicated friendship and the desperate need to belong (Alice Winn).

1987: After a childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job delivering mail at a local art school, a bed in a halfway house, and some new friends, including wild-child Sue. When Ursula is invited to join a squat at the Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist this hodgepodge family. But as Sue’s behavior and demands become more extreme, Ursula, who has always been hungry—for food, but more importantly for love and acceptance—carries out her friend’s terrible dare. And, for this, Ursula finds herself literally haunted.

Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned but reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by a true-crime documentarian researching an unsolved disappearance. But the filmmaker is not the only one who has discovered Ursula’s whereabouts, and as her past catches up with her present, Ursula must work out whether the monsters are within her or without—and if they will finally make her pay for her past mistakes.

Part gothic horror, part coming-of-age, and with a contemporary twist on the haunted-house story, Hunger and Thirst is a chilling tale of loneliness, of the dangerous line between wanting and needing, and of how far a person will go to truly belong.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Shadow Reaper, which releases on June 2nd 2026.

The city of Aravell is in peril, plagued by a deadly blackmist and reapers who roam the streets, stealing magic from innocent children in their thirst for power. Seventeen-year-old Viridia Solace has trained for years to hunt these reapers, but their ranks keep growing, led by the man who murdered her parents: the Reaper Priest.

When the Priest’s most loyal follower, Reeve Ashton, is captured, he offers Viri a chance to avenge her parents . . . for a price. She knows better than to bargain with a reaper, let alone this reaper, but his offer is too good to resist.

Soon she’s breaking him out of prison, colluding with his crew of magic thieves, and following him deep into the blackmist forest in search of an ancient legend, all so they can stop the Reaper Priest’s plot to doom the city. Viri is staking her life on Reeve’s plan, but how can she trust a silver-tongued criminal to keep his word? And how can she trust her own heart when a buried secret could shatter everything?

Full of relentless twists, enemies-to-lovers romance, found family, and high-stakes action, Shadow Reaper is the start of a breathtaking new duology from international bestselling author Lynette Noni.

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Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Murder by Design by Lee Goldberg, which releases on June 1st 2026.

Edison Bixby is wealthy, handsome, and, due to a traumatic brain injury, impulsively rude. He’s also a brilliant insurance investigator who solves baffling crimes by figuring out how the design of the man-made world around us makes them possible. Enter Wally Nash: a struggling actor hired to keep Bixby from offending everyone he meets.

Their first case together looks like a simple accident. Caroline Crowley took a nasty fall down a staircase at a shopping mall in front of dozens of witnesses. Video clearly shows the deadly misstep. But Bixby is certain she was murdered by design, subtly manipulated into causing her own demise. The mall itself made the crime intentional, if not inevitable.

Now Bixby must prove his outrageous theory before a very cunning killer gets others on his hit list to murder themselves, too.

CHAPTER ONE

The legal term for what I am about to share with you in this first chapter is “hearsay,” meaning I didn’t witness any of it myself. I’ve cobbled together this pivotal event in Edison Bixby’s extraordinary life from what I was told by people who were there, what I’ve read on the internet, and what I’ve imagined. But I assure you it’s 99 percent accurate, because I’m an actor with an intuitive ability to create full-bodied characters from the slightest scraps of information.

Like so much in Bixby’s life, it all began with a murder.

Let me set the stage, because what happened was like a play that Agatha Christie might have written . . . if she were on crack.

The location was the ballroom of the grand old Belmont Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where five hundred of the city’s elite gathered for a luncheon honoring Grant Murdock—the talented chef, successful restaurateur, hard-partying metrosexual playboy, and unapologetic narcissist—as businessperson of the year due to the extraordinary success of Slop, his new Michelin-starred restaurant.

But they never got the chance. Murdock dropped dead at the table of honor after taking one sip of his gumbo, which, to add insult to fatal injury, was his own signature dish, though I’m sure fast-acting poison wasn’t in his recipe.

The Belmont’s savvy manager, who’d dealt with plenty of celebrity overdoses, suicides, and murders in the hotel over the years, immediately ordered the entire property sealed off by armed security guards. Not a single person, employee, napkin, or spoon was allowed to leave the building.

The first LAPD detective on the scene was Bridget McGregor, wearing the same off-the-rack pantsuit and blouse that she’d worn the day before and sporting a carefree hairstyle created by her bed pillow. It didn’t take her long to establish the facts of the murder and to assess the tricky context in which it had occurred.

Some of the most politically connected people in Los Angeles were in that ballroom, four of them at the table where Murdock was face down in his soup. They were important, angry, and demanding a quick solution to the murder. And, to her credit, McGregor knew that she couldn’t give them one.

But she knew someone who could.

McGregor took out her phone and reluctantly called Edison Bixby, the LAPD’s top homicide detective, who undoubtedly would’ve been assigned the case if it hadn’t been his day off.

Bixby pulled up to the Belmont thirty minutes later in a matte-black Bugatti Chiron with a flashing red bubble light stuck on top. It was brash and ridiculous, with a touch of self-deprecation, designed to make Bixby come across as charming rather than obnoxious, which wasn’t an easy feat to pull off. But, somehow, he did it.

He drove under the hotel’s vast portico, past the medical examiner’s wagon and the crime scene unit’s van, and took the open spot directly in front of the lobby doors.

The Chiron’s driver’s side door opened and Bixby effortlessly emerged in a perfectly tailored Tom Ford suit, a flower in his lapel and his badge wallet open over the breast pocket of his jacket. He might as well have been wearing a tuxedo. Frankly, I’m surprised that he wasn’t, since he was obviously going for a Bruce Wayne vibe. He was thirty-one years old, but looked much younger. He had a smattering of curated stubble on his cheeks and his hair was artfully askew, as if he’d just arrived from the makeup chair at a Vanity Fair photo shoot, which, incredibly, was exactly where he was coming from.

Bixby smiled and handed his key to the bewildered valet. “Don’t press the wrong button or you’ll activate the ejector seat.”

The multimillionaire detective, and LA’s most eligible bachelor, strode into the lobby with a dancer’s grace, as if he might break into song or bust a move at any moment—then he saw medical examiner Rosalind “Rosie” Okamoto and some CSI techs milling around, killing time.

Bixby went up to Rosie, a stout woman in her forties, who was leaning against a pillar and checking her email. She looked up as he approached and he gestured across the lobby to the ballroom doors, where two uniformed police officers stood guard.

“Isn’t the body in there?” he said.

“Yes, and I got a quick look at him, but we got shooed out by McGregor. We were told to wait on you before doing our work,” Rosie said. “Terrific entrance, by the way. Shame there were no photographers here to see it.”

“If you’re going to arrive,” Bixby said, “you should arrive.”

“I wish I could, but I don’t have a $3 million sports car, a $6,000 suit, and a personal trainer to keep me slim.”

He leaned close to her ear and whispered: “It’s not the money. It’s the attitude.”

“What’s yours?”

“This job is so much fun and I’m great at it.”

“Every day we see dead bodies and meet people experiencing the worst moment of their lives,” she said. “What’s fun about that?”

“Solving mysteries, fixing problems, and making the world a better place.”

Bixby said it without a trace of sarcasm, cynicism, or any ism. It was an honest response.

Rosie stared at him. “You can’t be for real.”

“You have to embrace life, Rosie. But first, tell me why Grant Murdock can’t anymore.”

“I obviously haven’t done an autopsy or any toxicology tests yet, so don’t hold me to this, but I’d say he was killed by a fast-acting poison, probably cyanide or strychnine.”

Bixby tugged the flower out of his lapel and gently slipped it into Rosie’s hair. “Don’t get too comfy. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

“You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

He winked at her. “Awfully.”

Bixby strode to the ballroom, where the uniformed police officers standing guard opened the doors for him like he was royalty. And, let’s face it, that’s exactly what he was, at least at the LAPD, where he had an unprecedented 100 percent case-closure rate.

His arrival in the ballroom created an immediate buzz. People discreetly slipped their phones out of their pockets or handbags to snap a picture of him as he weaved among the tables toward the table of honor in front of the dais.

I’m sure he noticed the phones because he’s a man who sees everything without appearing to be looking at anything. He also noticed the banquet tables, the place settings, the flower arrangements, the chandeliers, as well as minutiae like the knot on someone’s shoelaces, a dirty fork on the carpet, fresh crumbs on a tablecloth, and the hairs on a passing fly’s ass. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

He stopped just short of the table of honor, where Murdock lay face down in his soup and the table’s four other guests stood near their former seats, radiating their social stature and their withering impatience. Detective Bridget McGregor stood off to one side, interviewing a nervous male server.

Before McGregor could approach Bixby, one of the guests, a middle-aged woman with a Botox-tightened face and collagen-swollen lips who wore more diamonds than most jewelry stores have in stock, cut him off.

“The great detective has finally graced us with his presence,” Edith Gotsford said. “How much longer do we have to stand here watching Grant decompose in his gumbo?”

“You could look the other way,” Bixby said.

“She can’t.” This snide comment came from a woman much younger than Gotsford, but also a devotee of plastic surgery. Her name was Lake Blue, but prior to leaving Oklahoma for Hollywood to pursue a career as a supermodel, social media influencer, actress, or, if all else failed, the wife of a very rich man, it was Harriet Glick. She was too thin, thanks to injections of black-market Ozempic, and top heavy, thanks to surgically enhanced breasts, which were very much on display in a low-cut summer dress.

“She’s loving it,” Lake continued. “I’ll bet she already took a selfie with his corpse.”

“And I’ll bet you’ve lifted his wallet.” Gotsford glowered at her, then shifted her glower to Bixby. “I’d frisk that gold digger if I were you.”

Lake smiled at him. “I’d like that. Be thorough. Pro tip: It could be in my cleavage.”

Gotsford took a glance at her bosom and sneered. “You could hide a duffel bag between those enormous basketballs. Pro tip: Don’t get your boob job at Dick’s Sporting Goods.”

Bixby ignored them both and walked around the table, shouldering past a man to get a closer look at Murdock’s body.

The man was Roger Fitzhugh, the Southern California car dealership tycoon, who smelled heavily of breath mints and alcohol, which he sucked on to hide the smell of everything he’d been drinking, fooling no one. His rheumy eyes, the spider veins on his bulbous nose, and the drops of red wine on his tie were some of the subtle giveaways. I’m sure Bixby spotted even more.

“At least Grant’s last meal had a Michelin star,” Fitzhugh said. “He would have wanted it that way.”

Bixby glanced at Fitzhugh’s bowl of soup and the other dishes on the table. It appeared that Murdock’s death had ruined everyone’s appetites. Nobody had touched their soup, which was totally understandable. I wouldn’t have, either. Even the basket of bread hadn’t been disturbed.

“It’s restaurants that get stars,” Bixby said, “not individual dishes.”

“It’s the dishes that make the restaurant, monsieur,” said Pierre Delcourt, another of the table guests, who wore a tailored chef’s jacket with his name embroidered on it, even though he wasn’t cooking anything that day and hadn’t been in an actual restaurant kitchen in years, not counting the fake ones on his Fox Network cooking competition shows, of course. The jacket was his brand, like Colonel Sanders’ white suit and black bow-ribbon tie, though he’d hate that comparison.

“If you say so.” Bixby plucked a piece of bread from the basket and sniffed it. “Mmmm. Sourdough. I love the smell.”

Gotsford snorted. “Are you sure you’re capable of solving this murder? Frankly, you don’t seem up to it to me.”

Before Bixby could respond, McGregor grabbed him by the arm and led him away from the table.

“Excuse us,” she said, and practically dragged him over to the wall beside the dais.

Bixby turned his back to the table to face her. “What a lovely group of people.”

“And they each have a motive for killing Murdock.”

“Of course they do,” he said, taking a bite of the bread.

“Edith Gotsford was Murdock’s first wife. He married her for her money and social contacts, exploiting them to the max to boost his career, while also having an affair with Lake Blue, who is now his second wife, and he’s cheating on her with the eighteen-year-old star of a Disney sitcom, if you believe the tabloids.”

“They’ve always been accurate about me.”

“Because they lavish you with praise, treating every case you solve like you’ve achieved cold fusion in your kitchen using Elmer’s glue and a bag of ice.”

“Do you know what cold fusion is?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea.”

“You could have fooled me,” Bixby said.

She studied his face. “Are you wearing makeup?”

“Just a little,” he said. “I didn’t have time to wash it off after the photo shoot. Does it make me seem self-absorbed and obsessed with my appearance?”

“No more than the usual,” McGregor said. “Getting back to the murder, Chef Pierre Delcourt was Murdock’s mentor, who taught him everything. Murdock repaid the favor by stealing his recipes, including the gumbo he died in, to make himself famous. Roger Fitzhugh invested heavily in Murdock’s much-hyped frozen-food venture, which bombed because of terrible quality control, by which I mean none at all. People got violently ill eating that shit. Murdock diverted most of Fitzhugh’s money into renovating his beach house, which he claimed was the company’s headquarters. None of the four are making a dime out of Slop, his wildly successful new restaurant. The place is booked solid for two years. It’s easier to get a reservation at Buckingham Palace.”

“You will definitely be needing these soon.” Bixby reached into his pocket and handed her a set of handcuffs. “You left them locked to the bedpost this morning.”

She snatched the cuffs from him and jammed them into her pocket, looking around to see if anyone noticed. Nobody did. “I knew it was a mistake bringing you down here.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because Grant Murdock was murdered in front of everyone at his table, and hundreds of other people—including most of the Los Angeles City Council, two Oscar winners, and the man most likely to be our next mayor—and I have no idea how it was done.”

Bixby glanced over his shoulder at the table, turned back to her, and shrugged. “The murder doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”

“It’s impossible.”

“I don’t see why.”

“The seats at the table were reserved for specific guests, but the actual seats themselves were unassigned, so nobody could have known ahead of time which seat Murdock would take or which bowl he would eat his soup from,” she said. “Moreover, the guests at the table had no way of knowing which server, or which tureen of soup, would be used at that table. Not only that, but the server couldn’t have poisoned him, because none of the other people he served at that table, or any previous table, from the same tureen were poisoned. On top of that, the server doled out the soup before the diners at the table were all seated.”

While she was telling him all those important details, Bixby ate his piece of bread and studied the ceiling, which she found very distracting.

“Did you hear a word that I just said?” she said.

“I heard you say ‘soup’ a lot.” Bixby shifted his gaze from the ceiling to her. “Isn’t gumbo more like a stew than a soup?”

“I think you’re missing the point.”

“I haven’t missed anything.”

She knew that was probably true, which was why she’d called him, so now she studied the ceiling, though she had no idea what she was looking for. “What do you see up there?”

“Get the hotel manager over here right away.”

“You think the poison was dropped into Murdock’s soup from the ceiling?”

“Go,” he said urgently, then turned his back on her and studied a row of identical light switches on the wall.

She left to find the manager and, as soon as her back was to him, Bixby took a black Sharpie out from inside his jacket and began drawing a big square on the wall above the row of light switches. He then put X’s in each interior corner and two in the center. He was still working on it when McGregor returned with the hotel manager.

“Detective Bixby, this is the Belmont’s manager, Jack Porter.”

Porter was short, with an epic comb-over that drew long hair from the sides of his head that would have otherwise entirely covered his hobbit-like ears and hung down to his shoulders. “Are you drawing on my wall?”

Bixby pointed his Sharpie at the row of light switches. “Do you know which of these switches controls the chandeliers?”

McGregor groaned to herself.

“No, I don’t,” Porter said. “But I could get our tech guy down here.”

Now it was Bixby’s turn to appear incredulous. “You’re the manager of the hotel and you’re telling me that you don’t know how to operate the ballroom lights?”

“It’s not my job,” Porter said.

“Your job is to assure that your guests have a pleasurable experience in your hotel.”

“It’s just the lights—”

Bixby interrupted him. “Lights are crucial, and how to turn them on and off should be obvious to anyone, including you or a guest, without having to call ‘the tech guy.’ But it’s not. It’s totally unclear from this row of switches which one controls which light.”

McGregor spoke up, her impatience giving her voice an edge. “What do the light switches have to do with the murder?”

“They are the only thing in this ballroom that’s impossible to understand.” Bixby tapped his Sharpie against his drawing on the wall. “This is a map of the chandeliers on the ceiling. Install a light switch where each X is—that way anybody who walks in here will instantly know which switch controls each chandelier. Problem solved.”

McGregor had to practically grit her teeth to keep her anger in check. “The lights aren’t the problem you’re here to solve, Bixby. It’s the murder.”

He waved off her objection. “Oh, I did that the instant I walked in the room.”

“You did?”

“The answer is in the design.”

“You always say that.”

“Because it’s a fact of life.” Bixby glanced at Porter. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m not finished with you yet.”

And then Bixby went to the dead man’s table, McGregor and Porter following along. He addressed the four guests, who still stood impatiently by their seats at the table.

“The layout of the room, the arrangement of the tables, the placement of the dishware, and the system for serving food are all designs that combine to determine what can and can’t be done in the space. Unless you are very smart and figure out a way to use the design against itself. But that didn’t happen this time. This murder was stupid.”

McGregor said, “Are you saying I’m dumb?”

“I’m saying they are.” Bixby swept an arm toward Edith Gotsford, Pierre Delcourt, Lake Blue, and Roger Fitzhugh. “They killed him.”

Everyone except Bixby appeared to be stupefied by the pronouncement, but it was McGregor who asked the obvious question.

“How did they do that?”

“Look at the table,” Bixby said, and McGregor did. “None of the guests touched their spoons or tasted their gumbo. That’s because each spoon is coated in poison.”

McGregor nodded, the pieces fitting together for her now. “Since they didn’t know which seat Murdock would take at the table, they simply poisoned every spoon.”

“Simple, but stupid.” Bixby looked right at Gotsford. “Not exactly the work of a criminal mastermind, is it?”

And with that, he was done and shifted his attention to the astonished hotel manager. “Come with me, Mr. Porter. I want to see your hotel rooms. I’m sure the switches in there are a mess, too.”

Bixby turned his back to Gotsford and started to walk away, the murder and the killers already forgotten. The light switches were more important to him.

“Don’t you dare turn your back on me,” Gotsford shouted.

Bixby looked over his shoulder at her, a bemused grin on his face. “Who are you again?”

“You sanctimonious prick.” She thrust her hand into her Birkin bag, yanked out a small gun, and shot Edison Bixby in the face.

That should have been the end of his story.

But it wasn’t.

It was only the beginning.

Copyright © 2026 by Lee Goldberg. From Murder by Design by Lee Goldberg. Reprinted by permission of Thomas & Mercer, a division of Amazon Publishing. 

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘Murder by Design’ by Lee Goldberg appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Blackthorn Women by Jess Lourey, which is out now.

After her husband’s infidelity, devastated Katrine Blackthorn reluctantly returns to Faith Falls, Minnesota, to her family’s Queen Anne mansion on the hill and the magic that binds them all.

Her grandmother Velda charms everyone she meets. Her mother, Ursula, is a brewer of potions who sees a threat around every corner. And there’s her estranged sister, Jasmine, broken by something no one will name. With Katrine’s return, all that the Blackthorns have feared seems to be manifesting. The snakes amassing with the spring thaw and the stranger who’s rolled into town are just the first omens threatening the fragile peace the family is rebuilding.

Now Katrine must face the darkest secret of her lineage and rediscover her own magic if the Blackthorn women are to survive.

Chapter 1

The snake lay across Ursula Blackthorn’s workshop doorstep, fat and lazy as spilled sin.

She paused, and she was not a woman easily deterred.

Nearly sixty years on this earth had taught her to take what she wanted. The attention of a man she fancied, the run-down family mansion she’d bought for a song, a fair price for the medicines she brewed out of her workshop . . . if she desired it, she claimed it.

Only snakes made her flinch.

Which was unfortunate, because her hometown of Faith Falls, Minnesota, was infamous for an event the locals had come to call “the snakening.” No one could predict when it would strike, but it always started the same way, with an early spring that blew into town hot and jittery. The US Geological Survey would begin to measure unusual Richter readings in the area. Shortly after, tens of thousands of red-lined garters would unravel from a massive ball and writhe up to meet the sun.

The sight and sound were bad, but the smell was worse.

Scientists called the phenomenon “a sporadic emergence from underground hibernacula attributed to anomalous thermoregulatory behavior.” Locals viewed it as an inconvenience that didn’t outweigh the bucolic charm of their river town. The superstitious called it bad luck.

Ursula didn’t believe in luck, but she had a good reason to be wary of the creatures. Her first snakening, when she was just a child, had been the worst day of her life. Something terrible had happened to her father, Charlie Tanager, after sunset. The snake currently lying on her doorstep brought fragments of that night back: a beer glass embossed with a twelve-point buck, the terrible quiet after violence, the way Charlie had looked at her and her mom, his breath rattling in his chest as he roared:

Every time the snakes rise, I’ll be there to steal your power. Your children will pay, and their children, forever down the line. Not one of you Blackthorn witches will find a better man than me. Not one of you can stop me.

Take it back, Charlie Tanager! her mother had screamed. Take that curse back!

Fear carved itself into Ursula’s bones that night, a terror that lingered as she waited for her father to return to seek his vengeance. But years passed, and Charlie Tanager never showed. Then came the next snakening many years later. Her daughters were teenagers. She’d jumped at shadows those awful days, certain she’d spotted her father in a crowd, in passing cars, in the face of every man who looked at Katrine and Jasmine too long.

But then the snakes slithered back into the earth, and not a single Blackthorn had been hurt. Ursula began to think maybe Charlie wasn’t returning, ever. She’d been foolish to waste so much time worrying. That’s when she really started to claim her life. Stopped asking for permission, started taking up space.

That didn’t mean the red-lined garter currently lying on her studio doorstep hadn’t jolted her with a sharp shock of fear, though. She’d been heading out to do some late-night work when she’d spotted it. Her heart was still dancing from the fright.

She glanced over her shoulder at the gorgeous Queen Anne mansion, now totally renovated, then back at the snake all lit up by the blue moon. The garter was the length of her forearm, its glossy black body striped with vivid red and gold. Just a snake, not an omen. You’re being silly, Ursula. This is August. Far too late in the season for the snakes to rise. Charlie’s not coming back.

Still, she was careful to step around it, and she muttered a protection spell as soon as she was inside her workshop. It should have soothed her, but unease continued to cling to her ribs like damp wool. She lit every lamp in the workshop, flooding the place with honey-colored light, then pulled over a chair to reach the high cupboard where she kept tools she rarely had a use for.

She went straight for the obsidian bowl. She filled it with rainwater from the jar by the window, water she’d caught three nights ago, during the tail end of a summer storm. She scattered in crushed rowan berries and a pinch of powdered bone—stag, not human—then dipped in her fingers to ripple the water. Closing her eyes, she began the incantation. The basin vibrated faintly against the workbench as the surface darkened, and the smell of worms and soil rose into the room.

She glanced down at the water, which had become a moving image. There was the town of Faith Falls, framed in twilight, the river glinting like molten pewter. From its banks, a black tide began to swell. Snakes, more than she’d ever seen, their bodies a knotting, writhing mass. The image shifted, closing in on a figure standing among them. Charlie Tanager’s face bloomed out of the murk, grinning with a mouthful of yellow teeth.

His eyes fixed on hers as if the vision was a window.

The whisper came next, sliding from the bowl and into her ear: Every time the snakes rise, I’ll be there.

She staggered back, heart hammering, then hissed a banishment spell. Charlie’s face blurred, but his grin lingered a moment too long, and in that moment she knew that nothing would stop him this time.

The only question was, Which one of the Blackthorn women would he destroy?

The post Read An Excerpt From ‘The Blackthorn Women’ by Jess Lourey appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and the first chapter from The Long Con by Jenna Voris, which releases on June 2nd 2026.

Nothing brings Chloe Bly more joy than swindling rich people out of their money. Ever since her mother’s funeral, she’s used her hotel catering job to slip into people’s rooms, pawn their valuables, and use the haul to pay off her family’s medical debt. It’s a perfect system—until she finally gets caught.

But instead of turning her in, the eccentric billionaire hotel owner wants to hire Chloe for a job. The con is simple: infiltrate his rival’s new luxury hotel—pure opulence, from its lavish suites to its guests’ attire, accessible only via yacht—steal back his missing Hotel Excellence Award, and get away clean. At stake? Enough money to offer Chloe a way out of debt, out of Miami, and away from her problems forever.

The only problem is that Chloe won’t be working alone. Instead, she must team up with Harper Parisi, the disgustingly wealthy, frustratingly gorgeous conwoman who’s been crashing Chloe’s jobs all year. Suspicious about why Harper would risk it all for the billionaire’s scheme, Chloe doesn’t trust her—or the complicated feelings she sparks. With time running out and millions of dollars on the line, Chloe must get in and out without letting her emotions sabotage her chances of getting rich . . . or getting even.

EXCERPT
Chapter One

Chloe leans both elbows on the table, slicks on another layer of half-melted lipstick (L’Oréal Colour Riche Satin, shade: Worth It), and decides she’s really not asking the universe for that much. Tonight, it comes down to three things—for the humidity to re­main at a somewhat reasonable level, for the straps of her thrifted ball gown to stop coming apart around her neck, and for the aging millionaire at her table to stay awake long enough for her to take all his money.

Three perfectly reasonable requests, in her opinion.

Chloe eyes her reflection in the table’s glittering centerpiece as she tucks the lipstick back down the front of her dress. Between the layers of wilted red tulle and the smooth wave of her normally unruly hair, she hardly recognizes herself in the decorative glass. The centerpiece does, however, give her a clear view of Logan standing against the ornate wallpaper behind her, a tray of over­priced hors d’oeuvres propped lazily in one hand. Perfect.

He’s on time, she’s ready to move, and her date for the evening is two glasses in to a wine-fueled monologue about software devel­opment. It’s now or never.

“Ready?”

Priya’s voice is barely audible over the chatter of the party and Chloe resists the urge to adjust the wireless earbud hidden behind her hair. She can’t respond here, but there’s a flicker of movement in the centerpiece as Logan steps away from the wall, tray passing effortlessly from hand to hand as he cuts his way through the din­ner crowd.

“I was born ready, Priya, darling.”

Chloe resists the urge to roll her eyes. Logan’s always had a thing for dramatics, even in places like this. It’s something she learned the day she found him building an illegal air-conditioning unit on the floor of their freshman dorm, insisting she should dump his lifeless, overheated body in front of the dean’s office if he didn’t finish by noon. Now, she blames his day job and the Now You See Me films for feeding his amateur magician’s ego. Logan might have two different birthday parties booked tomorrow, but he’s here tonight and their plan begins the way they all do—with Chloe sitting across from a mark too rich for his own good, who, despite everything, is still completely oblivious to the cunning tilt of her lips.

This one was almost too easy to corner. James Montgomery Webber, seventy-two. A tech billionaire who recently tore up half a mile of Miami beachfront to build a sprawling new office hub. He currently employs half the city and he’s single-handedly fund­ing half of Andrew Carlyle’s senate campaign, which is how he scored an invitation to tonight’s festivities. Right up front at an exclusive, donors-only dinner in one of the Carlyle hotels.

He wasn’t necessarily the target Chloe would have chosen, but there’s an art to these things she’s learned not to push.

“Sandwich?”

Logan leans over their table, tray extended in Webber’s direc­tion. The warm scent of his cologne washes over them (Tom Ford, Ombré Leather), and Chloe risks a glance in his direction. Logan’s mouth is turned down in an expression of bored disinterest, but there’s a soft pink color painted across his already full lips. Because of course he found time to touch up. They both spent the last hour sweating outside, slipping their way through security checkpoints and locked doors, but god forbid Logan Amesfield show up to an event looking anything less than perfect.

Chloe grabs two tiny sandwiches off his tray and tries not to think about the frizzy curls currently sticking to the back of her neck. “Thanks.”

Webber barely looks up. Light from the chandelier flashes off his diamond-encrusted watch as he waves Logan away, like the mere presence of a waiter at their table is an inconvenience. Again, Chloe barely refrains from rolling her eyes. If she were working tonight or wearing her usual catering uniform, Webber wouldn’t spare her a glance either. He’d look right through her on his way to the bar, but tonight, she’s off the clock. She’s armed with four-inch heels and borrowed lipstick, and Logan’s interruption gives her the opening she needs.

“What were you saying?” Chloe leans in, knee casually brush­ing Webber’s under the table. “The app you’re developing. What’s it called?”

Webber blinks. The motion exaggerates the wrinkles around his eyes, but his forehead remains unnaturally still. “You mean Slique?”

“Yes! What a great name.”

It’s not. It’s ridiculous, but everything about James Montgom­ery Webber is ridiculous. Chloe’s not about to get picky now. She slides one finger up his arm, stopping just inside the crook of his elbow. “What does it do, again?”

She has him; Chloe feels it as Webber’s gaze slides from her face to the neckline of her gown before finally dropping to her hand. He clears his throat. “It’s a black car service. For luxury vehicles and on-call drivers.”

“Oh!” Chloe blinks. “So it’s like Uber?”

A hint of a smile touches the corner of Webber’s mouth. “Not exactly. Imagine you land in a new city. Your regular driver is back home, and you don’t know who to trust. What do you do?”

Chloe’s pretty sure 99 percent of the population will never actu­ally encounter that problem, but she tilts her head anyway, feign­ing confusion. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly.” Webber grins, eyes still roaming unsubtly down the length of her body. “That’s where we come in.”

If there’s one thing rich people love more than being rich, Chloe thinks, it’s explaining in great, condescending detail exactly how rich they are. James Montgomery Webber has enough money to change the world yet here he is—drinking wine in the ballroom of a luxury hotel and breaking down the basics of capitalism to a girl fifty years his junior.

Some people don’t deserve nice things.

Some people deserve to have their watches stolen.

It’s only when Priya’s voice comes through the earbud again that Chloe realizes she’s instinctively tightening her grip, fingers curl­ing into the fabric of Webber’s jacket as she imagines him jump­ing into a solid-gold Slique car, filled to the brim with glittering Scrooge McDuck coins.

“Corner by the balcony. Four o’clock.”

Priya is talking around a mouthful of food—probably the pad thai they all ordered for dinner—and Chloe’s stomach growls at the thought.

“Really?” Logan asks. “That corner looks pretty exposed.”

Chloe can practically hear Priya’s eye roll through the line. “Have I ever been wrong, Logan?”

“Many times.”

“About this?”

“Okay, no, but—”

“Then stop complaining. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Chloe releases her grip on Webber and shoots a quick glance toward the wall. The area Priya suggested is exposed, people wan­dering on and off the balcony on their way to the bar, but Priya has also never failed to find a security blind spot. Chloe pictures her in the back of her trusty orange Subaru, feet propped against the dashboard, romance novel in her lap as she tracks them through the party from several blocks away. If she says the corner is their best bet, Chloe will make it work. She gives herself three more seconds to plan a route and then, when Webber pauses for breath, she makes her move.

“Oh, I get it!” she exclaims, face lighting up. “Your app is like Charm.”

“No, it’s . . .” Webber breaks off, confusion threatening to crack the Botox-induced stillness of his forehead. “Wait, what’s Charm?”

“That new rideshare app?” Chloe pulls out her phone. “The one with the armored cars? That’s who you got the idea from, right?”

“I . . . no. We’re revolutionizing the future of luxury transpor­tation. I’ve never heard of Charm.”

“Sure you have! They’re everywhere. I literally took a Charm car to dinner tonight. I’ll show you.”

Chloe opens her phone, screen deliberately shielded so Webber can’t see she’s tapping at nothing.

Priya snorts faintly in her ear. “I still can’t believe that works.”

“Right?” Logan mutters. “Dibs on gaslighting the next CEO. It’s not fair Chloe gets to have fun while I’m stuck in a cummer­bund.”

“I think you look handsome.”

“Please be serious, Priya, I look like a killer whale.”

Chloe ignores them and stands, phone extended above her head like she’s trying to catch a signal. “There’s never any service at these things.” She heaves a defeated sigh. “Come on, let’s try by the window.”

She starts toward the balcony without looking back and, be­cause she’s good at her job, because men like Webber truly believe the world is supposed to open for them, he follows.

Chloe weaves through tables of well-dressed donors and waitstaff, dodging photo ops and handshakes along the way. If Andrew Carlyle is really trying to fund a senate campaign, she thinks he can start by cutting his party budget. It’s a Wednesday night in late June and this entire event is already several degrees of too much. This Carlyle hotel is nearly twice as big as the loca­tion Chloe works at across town—sleek and shiny with enormous floor-to-ceiling windows that face out over a private beach and the ocean beyond. It’s all dripping chandeliers and ornate pillars and black-tie guests, a dazzling combination that might as well punch Chloe in the throat and call her an impostor for daring to con her way inside.

There’s the governor sitting at a table near the front with his equally bored-looking wife. There’s the weatherman from chan­nel six, laughing animatedly as he downs another glass of cham­pagne. There’s Katherine Windey, who can apparently take a break from overseeing her own hotel empire as long as it doesn’t require looking up from her phone. Rich people. Powerful peo­ple. People who seem completely unfazed by Andrew Carlyle’s enormous, spray-tanned face beaming down at them from every angle. Chloe shivers and averts her eyes from the campaign post­ers as she walks. It’s not like he’s actually watching her. Carlyle’s not even here yet, which is annoying considering this entire event is for him, but the image of his smooth, dark hair and too-white smile feels burned into her brain.

Chloe pauses next to the balcony with Webber at her side. She moves back and forth until Priya’s hum of approval echoes in her ear, then stands on her tiptoes, pretending to wave her phone over­head. “I’m telling you,” she says. “You have to see this app. I mean, what are the odds you both had the same—”

Something slams into them from behind. Chloe stumbles, heel snagging on the hem of her dress. She catches herself against the wall as wine sloshes over the rim of Webber’s glass and when she whips around, she finds Logan staring back at them, face a por­trait of nervous concern.

“Oh my god!” He reaches for her with one hand, the other still clutching a tray of what looks like snail carcasses. “I’m so sorry, are you two okay?”

Chloe’s not, actually. She’s pretty sure part of her dress ripped. There’s a breeze tickling her ankle that definitely wasn’t there be­fore, but she forces herself to ignore it as Logan reaches for Web­ber next.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, dabbing at Webber’s wine-stained tie. “Let me get you something for that, I’m—”

“Leave it.” Webber slams his half-empty glass onto Logan’s tray. “Just go. And get me another drink while you’re at it.”

Chloe can practically feel the annoyance rolling off him, frus­tration at the seemingly incompetent waitstaff mixed with the self-preserving instinct of not wanting to draw attention in a place like this. Logan seems to realize the same thing because he ducks his head, tray tucked against his chest like a makeshift shield, be­fore turning and disappearing into the crowd.

Webber curses under his breath, wine still tracing scarlet trails over his rigidly pressed cuffs. “Unbelievable,” he mutters. “To­night of all nights.”

After another precarious second, Chloe finally succeeds in free­ing her shoe from the folds of her skirt. She tosses her hair over one shoulder with as much disgust as she can manage. “I know. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Webber waves a hand, and this time, Chloe thinks the dismissal applies to her, too. “I should go find somewhere to clean up.”

Chloe nods, doing her best to look disappointed as she focuses on his wine-splattered shoes. “Of course. Do you have a business card? Maybe we could stay in touch?”

One final trick. Something to fuel his ego when he leaves. Men like Webber, she’s learned, don’t have business cards. They walk through life with the expectation that everyone already knows ex­actly who they are and what they do, but the flattery works. Web­ber’s expression softens ever so slightly as he shakes his head. “I’m afraid not. Enjoy the party, though. It was nice to meet you.”

And then he’s gone, another indistinguishable suit in a crowd of dazzling wealth.

Chloe watches his retreating back for another second before tucking her phone back down the front of her dress. Easy, she thinks. It’s always easy with men like that. Even now, part of her almost wishes Webber would look down and notice that his watch is missing, the band of diamonds now stashed securely in Logan’s pocket. Maybe then they’d have a real challenge.

“Got it,” Logan mutters through the earpiece. “That was smooth.”

Chloe rolls her eyes and plucks a half-empty glass of wine off a nearby table. “You pushed me into a wall, but okay.”

“Technicalities. Who’s next?”

Who’s next? Because someone has to be. Because they didn’t drive all the way across town and crash Carlyle’s campaign dinner to stop here, not with an entire ballroom at their fingertips. Not with the rapidly growing mountain of unpaid bills on Chloe’s desk.

“What about Carlyle?” Chloe asks, eyes flicking from table to table. “Is he here yet?”

Logan’s snort is a gentle caress in her ear. “You want to go after your boss? I thought you liked your job.”

Chloe resists the urge to tell him that no one actually likes their job. She puts up with her own long hours in the hotel kitchens for the healthcare. She does it for the discounted employee housing and the stability of a steady paycheck, because she has other people to worry about, not because she likes it. The thought of her shift tomorrow is barely a whisper in the back of her mind. Right now, the thrill of success makes her feel unbreakable. She wants some­thing risky. She wants something fun. She wants to sink her teeth into this entire gold-plated room and call it justice.

Priya is typing; Chloe can hear the click click click of her acryl­ics through the earbud. “Doesn’t look like Carlyle’s here yet,” she says. “Katherine Windey is at table seven, though, if you really want to rob a hotel CEO. Her properties are supposed to be better, anyway.”

Chloe tilts her head. “Didn’t she get arrested for embezzle­ment?”

“Everyone here has gotten arrested for embezzlement, Chloe. That’s, like, their whole thing.”

“Hold on.” Logan’s voice sharpens with interest. “Katherine’s here? Is she alone? What’s she wearing?”

“Oh my god, Logan,” Chloe mutters. “You can’t just ask what women are wearing.”

“That’s not . . . I’m asking about The Brooch.”

Chloe grins into her drink. Logan’s been after Katherine’s jew­eled bumblebee brooch since the ribbon-cutting ceremony of her new island resort last year. He thinks taking it would be good for his “street cred.” Chloe thinks the idea of Logan having any sort of street cred is laughable. She normally wouldn’t mind getting her hands on something that valuable, but this particular piece is usu­ally pinned directly beneath Katherine’s delicate, upturned nose. Even Logan and his sticky magician’s fingers haven’t found a way around that.

“No brooch,” Chloe decides. “Not tonight.”

Logan sighs mournfully. “It’s a collector’s item, you know.”

“I know.”

“I’d treat her right.”

Chloe is about to respond when a flurry of movement at the ballroom entrance catches her eye. Another group of donors ar­riving late, bottlenecking in the doors as they take in the grandeur of the ballroom.

“On it,” Priya says before Chloe can speak. “I’m pulling up a guest list.”

Chloe downs the rest of her drink, keeping one eye on the door as she slides along the back wall. Maybe tonight could still be inter­esting after all. One of the new arrivals has an enormous, jeweled brooch pinned to her lapel—not quite as big as Katherine’s but equally as obnoxious. Chloe is about to point it out when Logan sucks in a surprised breath. The sound is staticky in her ear, light­ing some deeply buried survival instinct in the pit of her stomach.

Chloe’s steps falter. “What?”

“Trouble,” Logan says, voice already resigned to the worst. “Two o’clock. Blue dress.”

Chloe cranes her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of who, ex­actly, Logan is talking about. Trouble could mean a lot of things—hotel security, a boss, a vengeful ex. Once, in Priya’s case, it was all three. Chloe ducks behind another table, gaze flitting from one classically beautiful face to another. “Do you want to elaborate? I can’t—”

There, to her left. A flash of blue silk. Ice tips down Chloe’s spine and she stumbles to a halt in the center of the ballroom. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

A few scandalized faces turn her way, but Chloe is long past caring. She’s frozen to the marbled tile, glass still clutched in one hand, and it’s all she can do not to crush the delicate stem between her fingers.

“What?” Priya’s voice is frantic. “What’s going on?”

Chloe opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. She’s stuck, watching the woman in blue break away from the crowd and head toward the bar. Eventually, it’s Logan who breaks the silence.

“Told you,” he says, wry humor coloring every word. “Trouble.”

THE LONG CON copyright © 2026 by Jenna Voris. Used by permission of The Dial Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.  All rights reserved. Cannot be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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