Lippman’s beloved Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan keeps a watchful eye on a criminally resourceful single father in “Seasonal Work,” while her mother, Judith, realizes that the life of “The Everyday Housewife” is an excellent cover for all kinds of secrets. In “Slow Burner,” a husband’s secret cell phone proves to be a dicey temptation for a suspicious wife. A father’s hidden past piques the curiosity of a young snoop in “The Last of Sheila-Locke Holmes.” Plus seven other brilliantly crafted stories of deception, murder, dangerous games and love gone wrong.

Injured in a freak fall, novelist Gerry Andersen is confined to a hospital bed in his glamorous high-rise apartment, dependent on two women he barely knows: his incurious young assistant, and a dull, slow-witted night nurse. Then late one night, the phone rings. The caller claims to be the “real” Aubrey, the alluring title character from his most successful novel, Dream Girl. But there is no real Aubrey. Could the cryptic caller be one of his three ex-wives playing a vindictive trick after all these years? Or is she Margot, an ex-girlfriend who keeps trying to insinuate her way back into Gerry’s life? Aubrey is threatening to visit him, suggesting that she is owed something. Is the threat real, or is it a sign of dementia?

In this collection of original and previously published nonfiction essays, New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman offers readers an introspective look into various facets of her life. Her childhood and school years, her successful career as a newspaper reporter, the challenge of balance, her life as a novelist and a reader --- Lippman’s takes on these universal subjects offer as many twists as her award-winning crime fiction. Of the 16 essays, only three have appeared in book form before.

Drawing on her own secrets, Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl --- assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake. Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie --- and the dead woman herself. Maddie is going to find the truth about Cleo’s life and death. Cleo’s ghost, privy to Maddie’s poking and prying, wants to be left alone.

Drawing on her own secrets, Madeline “Maddie” Schwartz helps Baltimore police find a murdered girl --- assistance that leads to a job at the city’s afternoon newspaper, the Star. Working at the newspaper offers Maddie the opportunity to make her name, and she has found just the story to do it: a missing woman whose body was discovered in the fountain of a city park lake. Cleo Sherwood was a young African-American woman who liked to have a good time. No one seems to know or care why she was killed except Maddie --- and the dead woman herself. Maddie is going to find the truth about Cleo’s life and death. Cleo’s ghost, privy to Maddie’s poking and prying, wants to be left alone.

They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he’s also passing through. Yet she stays and he stays --- drawn to this mysterious redhead whose quiet stillness both unnerves and excites him. Over the course of a punishing summer, Polly and Adam abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other --- dangerous, even lethal, secrets. Then someone dies. Was it an accident, or part of a plan? By now, Adam and Polly are so ensnared in each other’s lives and lies that neither one knows how to get away --- or even if they want to. Is their love strong enough to withstand the truth, or will it ultimately destroy them?

Luisa “Lu” Brant is the newly elected --- and first female --- state’s attorney of Howard County, Maryland. She sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death. The case dredges up painful memories, reminding her family of the night when her brother, AJ, saved his best friend at the cost of another man’s life. Lu now wonders if the events of 1980 happened as she remembers them. What details might have been withheld when she was a child? The more she learns about the case, the more questions arise.

Tess Monaghan wants nothing to do with a woman crazy enough to have killed her own child. But when her mentor asks her to keep an eye on Melisandre Harris Dawes, who --- by reason of criminal insanity --- was judged not guilty of her daughter’s death, she has to accept. However, things gets tricky after Melisandre becomes a prime suspect in a recent murder. While Tess scrutinizes her, a judgmental stalker has been watching her every move as well.

The acclaimed bestselling author of THE MOST DANGEROUS THING, I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE and WHAT THE DEAD KNOW returns with an addictive story that explores how one man's disappearance echoes through the lives of the five women he left behind --- his wife, his daughters and his mistress.

Heloise is a suburban madam who lives the life of “every mom” with soccer games and homework in between the hours where she runs her business and has her own customers, who spend time with her for a price. Life seems safe for her until another suburban madam is found dead, and suddenly the life she has built starts to feel a lot less secure.

Years ago, they were all the best of friends. As time passed and circumstances changed, they grew apart, became adults with families of their own, and began to forget about the past --- and the terrible lie they all shared. But now Gordon has died, and the others are thrown together for the first time in years. And then the revelations start.

Thirty years ago two sisters disappeared from a shopping mall. Their bodies were never found and those familiar with the case have always been tortured by these questions: How do you kidnap two girls? Who—or what—could have lured the two sisters away from a busy mall on a Saturday afternoon without leaving behind a single clue or witness?

Now a clearly disoriented woman involved in a rush-hour hit-and-run claims to be the younger of the long-gone Bethany sisters. But her involuntary admission and subsequent attempt to stonewall investigators only deepens the mystery.

For Tess Monaghan, the unsolved murder of a young federal prosecutor is nothing more than a theoretical problem, until her boyfriend, Crow, brings home a juvenile con artist who doesn’t even realize he holds an important key to the sensational homicide. Tess agrees to protect the boy’s identity no matter what, and with federal agents determined to learn the boy’s name at any cost, Tess finds out just how far even official authorities will go to get what they want.

In Laura Lippman's latest stand-alone novel (following 2003's EVERY SECRET THING), the lives of three girls who have been best friends for years --- and the affluent community in which they reside --- are forever changed when one of them brings a gun to school to resolve a mysterious feud.