First published 1995
Lara Cameron stands at the top of New York's real estate world, her name on skyscrapers and boutique hotels across the city. She got there from Glace Bay, a hardscrabble Nova Scotia mining town, where poverty was the only thing in abundance. Her first deal cost her more than money. A banker took her body as the price of entry, and she paid it. Since then she has lied, cheated, and made enemies who remember every slight. Philip Keller, a Chicago banker who loves her, gets less than he deserves. At forty, Lara is beautiful, glamorous, and still hungry in ways she cannot name. She marries the man who matches her childhood fantasy, an internationally celebrated concert pianist. Then someone puts her husband in a hospital bed and begins dismantling everything she built. The empire she clawed out of nothing is suddenly fragile. Lara has survived brutal men and brutal circumstances before, but this time the attack is personal and the stakes are total. She will have to decide how far she is willing to go to hold on to what she has.
Genres: fiction, drama, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, thriller
Vibes: ambitious, character-driven, dark, intense, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-closing-in, personal-vendetta, rise-and-fall, self-made-protagonist
Setting: New York, Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Chicago
Period: Contemporary
448 pages · Paperback · HarperCollins
Content warnings: abuse, sexual-assault, violence