One man. Five ex-wives. They’re all sharpening their knives . . . but only one of them will finish the job.
Intrigued? Well we are delighted to be revealing the cover for Sharpen Your Knives by Lauren Ho! Releasing on March 9th 2027, read on to discover the cover, synopsis, and excerpt below!
Robert West has had five wives, but they’ve never all been in a room together—until now. Summoned to the aging movie star’s house in the Highlands, they expect a weekend of grandstanding and perhaps some clue about who will inherit his vast fortune one day. They don’t expect Robert to announce that he’s dying, and penning a memoir that will dish the dirt on each of his notorious marriages.
The wives each seize on his offer to preview their chapter of the story. But after they’ve read the ruthless exposé, one of them decides not to stand for it—and soon Robert has a knife in his back.
It might not be the most tearful murder scene, but now the police will get involved and decades of scandals and secrets could become very public knowledge, and no one wants that. So, along with Robert’s devoted ghostwriter, the suspects strike a bargain to solve the case themselves. . .
EXCERPT
An introduction to all five of Robert West’s Wives and Children in chronological order/eras, in Robert West’s words and as transcribed by Rosie Bailey-Cheng
Eveline–1978-1995—What Goes Around… Comes Around
The first wife that almost made me swear off marriages—almost. We got married in our twenties and stayed married for eighteen years—seventeen years and eight months too long. If it weren’t for Phillip—my first child—coming along we might have separated earlier, but children have the power to hold together marriages that otherwise have all the structural integrity of wet kitchen paper.
Jackie Owens—1996-2000—Toxic
In hindsight, maybe picking my second wife from the Playboy Mansion was not the wisest strategy for someone seeking stability and low drama on his second go. But no one could have resisted Jackie in her heyday—I loved her, I’ll admit. We were like the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor of our generation. Eventually, however, one does tire of the drama she stirs up wherever she goes. And she is so clingy—ankle-monitor level clingy.
Charlotte—2001-2016—Renaissance
My best, most stable marriage, arguably the only one that could be described without the intervention of a licensed therapist, even if we did meet under questionable circumstances.
Still, what a life we built together, and what a daughter—Chloe—she gifted me with. Charlotte stood by me through the roughest period of my life after the cancer diagnosis. My greatest regret in life is not, in turn, being the best support system for her after her horrible accident, even if we were already done with each other by then—romantically, at least.
Chloe has paid the price for many of our mistakes. I can only hope that one day she’ll understand what every divorce lawyer (especially mine) already knows: love is the easy part.
Inez—2016 (annulled after three months)—Hollaback Girl
A spectacular lapse of judgement. I should never have married Inez, no matter how much it made sense at that point of time (it was a decision we took at two in the morning for a number of reasons, including warding off Jackie!). Maybe I did it because I was afraid I’d lose her too, after Charlotte’s near brush with death. It was flawed logic, of course. We had the perfect working relationship, and it should have stayed that way.
Suzette—2018—ongoing—So Much For My Happy Ending
The woman who finally taught me the difference between true love and expensive delusion. When we first got together I thought I’d finally found my true match, but now I’m here to tell you the truth: she’s as hollow as the remakes she directs. Suzette is the living embodiment of fool’s gold—beautiful, expensive and ultimately worthless.
Act I—Come, All Ye who are Vengeful
1. Rosalind “Rosie” Bailey-Cheng
It is a dark and stormy night, the lights are flickering, and Rosie Bailey-Cheng is stumbling around an unlit hallway of West Manor and seriously contemplating murder.
“Rosie, oh Rosie, where are you? Over,” Robert West, her employer, occasional tormentor and Hollywood legend, demands over the walkie-talkie.
Rosie sighs, pushes the talk button, and responds. “I’m coming up, Robert. Over.” She squints in the dim corridor, trying to orient herself while balancing a priceless tray of pu er tea. The twelve-bedroom manor is humongous, and even after twenty-days since her arrival, she occasionally gets lost in its warren of corridors. This time, she took a wrong turn because she wanted to avoid walking past the naked bronze sculpture of Robert in the reception hallway. Trust Robert to not request for a modesty fig leaf.
“Good,” Robert says, his voice rich and theatrical, like he’s broadcasting, fully-clothed, from the Royal Albert Hall. “Because you know what the Chinese say about tea—”
“No, I don’t,” Rosie mutters under her breath, even though the walkie-talkie isn’t live, “but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“—it’s only good for you when it’s hot. In fact, during the Qing Dynasty—”
Robert launches into an unsolicited treatise about imperial tea etiquette and digestive qi with impeccable enunciation as Rosie finally locates the right hallway and clatters upstairs as mutinously as she dared considering the vintage Meissen porcelain set she’s using costs more than her month’s salary as Robert’s ghostwriter—a fact she uncovered due to the high-pitched noise Suzette, Robert’s current wife, emitted when the latter saw Rosie plunk it in the dishwasher yesterday. She’d snatched it up and glared at Rosie. “Mais non! You never wash a Meissen in the bloody dishwasher, you plebe,” she’d said. OK, fine, she didn’t say you plebe——but she certainly implied it from the curl of her upper lip. The way she’d cradled the teacup you’d think Rosie had put a freshly minted kitten into the dishwasher to drown. It was the first time Rosie had seen Suzette care about anything other than herself, so naturally she Googled that bloody tea set and quickly came to the conclusion that yes, Suzette had been right.
Sighing, Rosie steels herself when she reaches the study and raps the door in quick succession; Robert is particular about the number of raps (three) and the quality of it (he doesn’t like a weak rap).
Robert is particular about many things, come to think of it. She lists them out in her head: no fragrances (unless it’s Robert’s signature room fragrance as concocted by Robert’s personal friend and master perfumer, Douglas Little, of the This Smells Like My Vagina fame—the name of Robert’s fragrance is unprintable); no music in the common area (“aural clutter”), strictly no stepping on the 4th and 17th riser on the stairs (“too squeaky”) before 7am and past 9pm (“Just skip those, Rosie,” Inez, Robert’s ex-wife-turned-PA had intoned dryly, knowing full well the staircase was far too steep to do that safely), no mentions of his former business partner Saul Kaplan, the entertainment mogul rumoured to have slept with one of his wives once or twice, and most importantly, no mobile phones in the house—Inez exempted, of course—because the government and tech companies could “listen in on your business”; and Robert, bless him, had a lot of business. Especially the kind that occurred between the sheets. As such, Rosie has to turn in her phone during the week when she’s working in Casa West, only getting it back on her day off, Sunday—a fair demand, given Robert’s status and the nature of the project she’d been hired to work on, which is a once-in-a lifetime memoir for the elusive Robert Quincy West.
Still, Rosie’s twenty-eight, and she’s never known life without a smartphone. So it’s understandable that she’s experiencing some withdrawal symptoms and is a little snippy by Friday. The toughest part is missing her online community—her found family of cold case obsessives and paranormal seekers. Her handful of contacts in Florida? Not so much.
On her first Sunday off since she got here twenty-five days ago, her phone was unceremoniously returned to her by the stern-faced Inez once she was out of the house and her small handbag was thoroughly searched in case she’d tried to smuggle out copies of her work—as though Rosie would be so stupid as to risk violating the scary NDA Robert’s lawyer, Harold Frampton had made her sign on her first day of employment. Rosie had immediately tried to go online, but she was only able to get network somewhere around the last third of her drive down from what she calls ‘Glencoe Mountain’ but which is actually Meall a’ Bhùiridh. She then spent the rest of the day catching up with the missed episodes of her favourite investigative true crime podcast, Cold Casing with Moira Cuthbert, while eating all the deep-fried food stuff she could find in the local pub, since Robert—or maybe it was Suzette—had banned seed oils and deep frying in the West household. Bliss.
Today’s Thursday—three more days till seed oils and refined carbs. Just a little longer, Rosie, she promises herself.
She fidgets in the dim hallway as she waits for Robert’s permission to enter. The upper-floor of the manor is lit only with retro candle-style wall fixtures from its last refurbishment in the 1930s, casting long shadows that Rosie’s overactive imagination quickly populates with whispering ghosts. Finally—“Enter,” Robert rasps. Rosie gratefully pushes the heavy oak door open with her elbow.
