When a woman witnesses a fatal car accident outside the Jersey Shore motel she manages, she’s suddenly thrust into a nightmare of gang violence, guns, and money that she can’t outrun.
HEAVEN’S A LIE
by Wallace Stroby
Mulholland Books, April 2021
(chez Writers House – voir catalogue)
Joette’s life brings new meaning to the phrase “paycheck to paycheck.” Struggling to afford her mother’s sky-high medical bills and also keep the lights on in her trailer home, Joette needs a break. So, when she spies a briefcase full of money amongst the fiery wreckage of a fatal car accident, she knows she can’t just let it be. Inside is a bounty better than she could have dreamed—just shy of $300,000 in neatly stacked hundreds and fifties. Enough to pay off her debts, give her mother the care she deserves, and maybe even help out a few of her friends. But, of course, the missing briefcase didn’t go unnoticed by the original owner, Travis—a ruthless dealer that’ll stop at nothing to get back what’s his. Joette is way out of her depth, but can’t seem to stop herself from participating in this cat-and-mouse chase. But can she beat Travis at his own game?
Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist and the author of seven novels, four of which feature Crissa Stone, the professional thief labeled “crime fiction’s best bad girl ever.” His first novel, The Barbed-Wire Kiss, was a Barry Award finalist for best debut novel.
Berlin—September, 1945. Two manuscripts are found in the rubble, each one narrating conflicting versions of the life of an Irish spy during the war in this slow-burn historical thriller with a dark comic edge with echoes of Thomas Mann and Flann O’Brien. One manuscript is the journal of German spy handler Adrian de Groot, written from a cellar during the Berlin air raids of 1943, following the death of his agent, friend, and former lover Frank Pike. In de Groot’s narrative, Pike is a charismatic Irish socialist and IRA fighter recruited by German intelligence to assist with the planned Irish-German invasion of Britain, but who never gets the chance to consummate his deal with the devil and spends his final years languishing in Berlin. While the journal chronicles de Groot’s complicated relationship with Pike and his attempts to keep him in his thrall, it also reveals de Groot’s own psychological struggle—as a bookish homosexual, erstwhile literary translator, and anti-Nazi conservative— to accommodate himself to the murderous regime he works for.
New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, a college student and budding jewelry designer, at their annual summer polo match and soiree. All seems perfect in the Larreas’ world—until an unexpected party guest from Santiago’s university days shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman’s cryptic comments spark Paloma’s curiosity about her father’s past, of which she knows little.
Nora Spangler is a successful attorney but when it comes to domestic life, she packs the lunches, schedules the doctor appointments, knows where the extra paper towel rolls are, and designs and orders the holiday cards. Her husband works hard, too… but why does it seem like she is always working so much harder? When the Spanglers go house hunting in Dynasty Ranch, an exclusive suburban neighborhood, Nora meets a group of high-powered women—a tech CEO, a neurosurgeon, an award-winning therapist, a bestselling author—with enviably supportive husbands. When she agrees to help with a resident’s wrongful death case, she is pulled into the lives of the women there. She finds the air is different in Dynasty Ranch. The women aren’t hanging on by a thread. But as the case unravels, Nora uncovers a plot that may explain the secret to having-it-all. One that’s worth killing for. Calling to mind a Stepford Wives gender-swap, THE HUSBANDS imagines a world where the burden of the “second shift” is equally shared—and what it may take to get there.
Ballet flows through their veins. Dara and Marie Durant were dancers since birth, with their long necks and matching buns and pink tights, homeschooled and trained by their mother. Decades later the Durant School of Dance is theirs. The two sisters, together with Charlie, Dara’s husband and once their mother’s prize student, inherited the school after their parents died in a tragic accident nearly a dozen years ago. Marie, warm and soft, teaches the younger students; Dara, with her precision, trains the older ones; and Charlie, back broken after years of injuries, rules over the back office. Circling around each other, the three have perfected a dance, six days a week, that keeps the studio thriving. But when a suspicious accident occurs, just at the onset of the school’s annual performance of The Nutcracker, a season of competition, anxiety, and exhilaration, an interloper arrives and threatens the delicate balance of everything they’ve worked for.