"Abandoned by her mother at age seven, Alexandra Winslow took solace in the mystery stories she read with her devoted father--and soon she was writing them herself, slowly graduating to dark, violent, complex crime stories that reflected skill and imagination far beyond her years. After her father's early death, at fourteen Alex is taken in by the nuns of a local convent, where she finds twenty-six mothers to take the place of the one she lost, and...

Batholomeo di Crespi, a bachelor decorator in the upscale New Jersey town of Our Lady of Fatima, circa 1970. His exquisite taste in fabrics and decor have made B well respected in OLOF; he's decorated all the important houses, from his divorced older sister's Georgian manor to Aurelia Mandelbaum's mansion. Aurelia's myopic daughter Capri, still living at home at age 40, has been B's unofficial fiancee for 20 years, but this was their mothers' idea,...