Desire, need, and ambition fuel Corrine Tedros, a Lady Macbeth wannabe who arranges the murder of her father-in-law, a soft-drink mogul. It's witnessed by a man in the late stages of Alzheimer's; he provides scattershot details but cannot accurately communicate what he saw.

Dark and beautiful, this novel explores the fear that drives how far people are willing to go to find what they want, and the steps they'll take to get it.

Lynn Kostoff is a professor of English at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina. He's previously written A Choice of Nightmares and The Long Fall.