The House Guest - by Jennifer Pashley (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An aspiring chef finds she has bitten off more than she can chew when her gig as a private cook to a bestselling author turns deadly in this propulsive, whip-smart suspense novel.

Brett Novak is a young upstart chef, with real, raw talent--if only she could catch a break. After getting dumped by her married girlfriend and losing the perfect job offer, Brett accepts a temporary position as a live-in, personal chef of a reclusive, bestselling author, Carson Smart, who resides in a mansion on a secluded beach in Cape Cod.

Carson immediately seduces her, but things get complicated when Carson's wife, Vera, arrives home from her trip, and the love/hate relationship between the two spouses erupts, leaving Brett caught in the middle. Brett, starved for attention, craves Carson's affection and yet is oddly drawn to Vera's seductive and destructive charms.

As Brett becomes an unwitting pawn and weapon, she questions how far husband and wife will go to wound the other. With nowhere else to turn, she has no choice but to stay--even as her hold on reality begins to slip. Can she survive her employers' dark appetites?

About the Author

Jennifer Pashley is the award-winning author of two short story collections, States, and The Conjurer, as well as the novels The Scamp and The Watcher. Her stories have appeared widely in journals like Mississippi Review, PANK, and SmokeLong Quarterly, and she has been awarded the Red Hen Prize for Fiction, the Mississippi Review Prize for fiction, and the Carve Magazine Esoteric Award for LGBT Fiction. She lives in Syracuse, New York.