First published 2005
Diane Stevens has a good life on the Upper East Side, money, connections, a career as an artist. Then her husband dies in what looks like an accident. Across an ocean, a woman who grew up poor in Philadelphia, bounced between strangers, and finally found stability in Paris married to a brilliant scientist, loses her husband the same way. The two women have almost nothing in common, but someone wants both of them dead. They are pulled together by fear and the need to survive, trying to understand why they are being hunted. At the center of it all sits Tanner Kingsley, CEO of a global think tank he built from nothing in seven years. Kingsley is close to a discovery that could reshape the world and deliver staggering power to whoever controls it. Four people have already died across New York, Denver, Paris, and Berlin. The women do not yet know whether they are targets because of a criminal trial, their husbands' research, or something far larger. Sidney Sheldon's eighteenth novel keeps the pressure on from the first page, pairing a globe-spanning conspiracy with two women who have no choice but to trust each other.
Genres: suspense, mystery, adult, adult-fiction, thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, fast-paced, gripping, suspenseful
Tropes: forced-proximity, globe-spanning-plot, high-stakes-survival, unlikely-allies
Setting: Upper East Side, New York, Philadelphia, Paris, Denver, Berlin
Period: 21st-century
401 pages · Paperback · HarperCollins
Content warnings: death, murder