Ann Kinnear has been invited to the Gotham Crime Fiction Conference to give a talk on "Making the Supernatural Super in Your Novel," but she isn't enthusiastic about adding public speaking to the offerings of Ann Kinnear Sensing.

Ann's conference liaison, editor Darren Van Osten, has problems of his own. His client, bestselling thriller author Jock Quine, was killed during a burglary at his Princeton mansion, and Darren is despairing of being able to coach Jock's bookish son Alec to pick up the authorial torch from his larger-than-life father. Darren's best hope of staying solvent is to capitalize on his most mysterious client, Lara Seaford, whose debut novel is sweeping the thriller awards.

Meanwhile, cozy mystery author Marilee Forsythe is demanding that her son and daughter-in-law, Jeremy and Jeanette, provide the money she needs to buy out her cozy contract and switch to her true calling: thriller novels. When Marilee is attacked at an author event and refuses to leave her Ocean City, Maryland, condo, the couple entertains guilty visions of a life without her disparaging comments and unreasonable demands.

As Ann's involvement in Darren and Jeanette's dilemmas deepens, she finds the cases have more in common than mere authorial posturing ... and that the stakes are life and death.