MY HUSBAND'S WIFE by Jane Corry

Returning from her honeymoon, young attorney Lisa Macdonald has been handed her first criminal case by her boss.  Far afield from the employment law cases she usually handles, Lisa's new client Joe Thomas is serving time for killing his girlfriend by pushing her into a bath of scalding hot water.

Mr. Thomas exhibits all of the symptoms of asperger's syndrome and instead of laying out what he considers is new evidence in his case, he tests her by presenting her with cryptic numbers that she must decipher.  As she is slowly being pulled into Joe's defense, Lisa is also struggling with her new marriage to Ed, an artist.

A young Italian girl in their apartment building has become part of Lisa and Ed's lives, as well as Ed's muse.  Ed is totally enthralled with sketching and painting Carla while Lisa spends longer and later hours working on her new case along with solicitor Tony Gordon.

At the culmination of Mr. Thomas' appeal, the relationships between many of the characters are altered.  But the book doesn't stop there. Jump ahead sixteen years and the secrets and lies that each of the characters has kept hidden change the course of all of their lives, leading to an explosive finale as this tense psychological thriller unfolds.

Hard to put down, Ms. Corry has written an engaging first novel and I look forward to more from this talented author.

ISBN:  978-0-7352-2095-9
Pub. Date:  January 31, 2017
370 pages
Available in Hardcover and eBook

THE POISON TREE

by Erin Kelly - to be released January 2010

It's 1990s London and Karen Clarke is a straight A college student with a long summer and bright future ahead of her when she meets aspiring actress Biba Capel at Queen Charlotte's College. This chance meeting changes Karen's life forever. Her middle class upbringing and dedication to her studies are swiftly swept away as she becomes enamored with Biba and her bohemian lifestyle. She soon joins Biba and Biba's brother Rex in their crumbling family home amid the emotional turmoil of their lives; lives filled with drugs, alcohol and lost days that can only end in tragedy in this psychological thriller.

As Ms. Kelly deftly weaves the past and present, we fast forward ten years as THE POISON TREE begins; Karen and her nine-year-old daughter arrive to pick up Rex from prison where he's spent the last decade for murder. The author never drops the ball as the suspense and tension build in this well written novel, right up to the dramatic ending.

Ms. Kelly's writing has been compared to that of Donna Tartt, but while reading THE POISON TREE I also found it reminiscent of BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER, a coming of age novel from the '60s by William Goldman.  This is a wondeful first novel and I highly recommend this psychological thriller!