Literary Suspense | 86,000 words

Comparable Titles: THE FAVORITES · THE GLASS HOTEL · LITTLE FIRES

EVERYWHERE

When a disillusioned former actress shoots an intruder—only to discover he’s the young man

she’s been mentoring—a fractured community must unravel its secrets to understand what

really happened.

Once a rising star, Raven Alberti has left behind her Hollywood career to raise her children in

her Cherokee husband’s small hometown on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border. But Honey

Locust Hollow is not the sanctuary she hoped for. Craving authenticity after years spent

performing for others, she struggles to find her role in a culture that both idolizes and resents

her. She forms a friendship with Jesse Gatlin, the town’s other fallen celebrity, a former

Olympic hopeful grieving the loss of his dream. Together, they try to reclaim a sense of

adolescence they never had. Then one summer morning, while Raven’s husband is working

out of town, Jesse makes a baffling appearance in their home. Raven, terrified and unaware

of the intruder’s identity, shoots him. The fallout is devastating: for Jesse, who is now in a

coma; for Raven, who is unable to remember pulling the trigger; for her two daughters, who

were present during the tragedy; and for her husband, who must battle feelings both of

suspicion and guilt. As law enforcement, lawyers, and locals rush in to determine culpability,

secrets bleed all around. A prosecutor dissects Raven and Jesse’s relationship in a

contentious trial. To reclaim her life and protect what’s left of it, Raven must call on the one

talent she hoped to leave behind—she’s going to have to act.

(97,000 words)

A speculative retelling of Great Expectations, set in a future reeling from AI-driven collapse.

Dickens meets Kazuo Ishiguro in this dystopian love story with a dash of magic and a literary voice.

Comparable Titles: KLARA AND THE SUN · SOME DESPERATE GLORY

Decades after humanity fought and won—a war against AI and its poisonous lies, society is rebuilding around the concept of absolute Truth. But thirteen-year-old Suri Phillips isn’t interested in ideology—she just wants to become a famous journalist and use the power of words for human well-being. Trapped in a cold, dysfunctional home, her dream feels out of reach until she saves the life of a mysterious fugitive, who blackmails her into helping him escape. When she succeeds, he makes her an extraordinary deal: if she meets his secret expectations by her twenty-fifth birthday, she’ll earn a breathtaking reward.

Although this trauma leaves Suri forever looking over her shoulder, her ambition attracts the attention of the powerful Avis Family, which summons her to meet Elle Avis, the adopted daughter of billionaire recluse Hatshepsut Avis. Though Elle is icy and manipulative, an earnest friendship grows as Elle’s desire to learn her parentage captivates Suri, whose own mother died when she was two. All the while, Hatshepsut is scheming. Consumed by grandiose ideas about Elle’s future, she pays for Suri’s education—expecting a return on her investment when Suri becomes a journalist.

In college, Suri falls in love with Elle, but their romance jeopardizes the

extraordinary reward promised by the fugitive. As she navigates this dilemma, the snare she unwittingly laid for herself at age thirteen begins to tighten around her. Suri and Elle’s destinies are indeed linked, but the long shadow of the past and their unequal prospects in the future have pitted them against each other. When Elle recognizes that childhood trauma—being abandoned by her parents and raised by a narcissistic adoptive mother—has eft her incapable of feeling love, Suri pursues the one truth her beloved has always desired—the knowledge of her origins. But that might prove an expectation better left unmet.

Literary Fiction | 99,000 words

Comparable Titles: THE PAPER PALACE · LOST AND WANTED

When two strangers lose their partners in the same metro crash, grief intertwines their

lives—forcing them to choose between holding on to the past and daring to begin again.

Told in alternating perspectives, Cora and Justin meet while waiting at the scene of a D.C.

metro crash that kills twelve people—including Cora’s husband and Justin’s girlfriend. In a

year of grief and healing, they dig into the mysteries of the tragedy, take a road trip through

two family sagas, and navigate a love no one understands but them. However, grief pulls

them in different directions: Cora’s quest takes her to a crash survivor in the slums of

Baltimore and a collaborative project that sets their world on fire, and Justin’s past leads him

to his estranged mother on the shores of Lake Michigan. When old demons and new dangers

surface, Justin wants to find a way back to normal life with Cora, and she must choose

between two men—one dead, whose memory she still clings to, and one alive, who offers a

chance to move on. Inspired by my experience losing my uncle, a World Champion Aerobatic

Pilot who fatally crashed during an airshow, this novel explores how sudden loss violently

divides our lives into the then and the now—and how love survives in the aftermath.