The door to hell locks from the inside. People are there, because they want to be. As humans they were selfish, deceitful evil beings. They were their own gods. Meet James, a racist sexually addicted malignant narcissist who's been deemed the master of gaslighting. James has enjoyed the spoils of wealth during his twenty-eight year marriage to Alyza, heiress to the Rockschild fortune. When he is diagnosed with a severe form of terminal cancer and given less than two years to live, his wife rushes to his side. However, James is determined to have one last affair. When Alyza learns of his affair with a young, Jamaican con artist, she decides to cheat too. Now everyone is sinning, but someone will die.

The door to hell locks from the inside. People are there, because they want to be. As humans they were selfish, deceitful evil beings. They were their own gods. Meet James, a racist sexually addicted malignant narcissist who's been deemed the master of gaslighting. James has enjoyed the spoils of wealth during his twenty-eight year marriage to Alyza, heiress to the Rockschild fortune. When he is diagnosed with a severe form of terminal cancer and given less than two years to live, his wife rushes to his side. However, James is determined to have one last affair. When Alyza learns of his affair with a young, Jamaican con artist, she decides to cheat too. Now everyone is sinning, but someone will die.

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020! NPR BEST BOOK OF 2020 PEOPLE MAGAZINE TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR BOOKPAGE BEST BOOK OF 2020 GOOD HOUSEKEEPING BEST BOOK OF 2020 “A sensual and perceptive novel. . . . With humor and humanity, Miller resists the simple scorned-wife story and instead crafts a revelatory tale of the complexities—and the absurdities—of love, infidelity, and grief.” —O, the Oprah Magazine A brilliantly insightful novel, engrossing and haunting, about marriage, love, family, happiness and sorrow, from New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller. Graham and Annie have been married for nearly thirty years. Their seemingly effortless devotion has long been the envy of their circle of friends and acquaintances. By all appearances, they are a golden couple. Graham is a bookseller, a big, gregarious man with large appetites—curious, eager to please, a lover of life, and the convivial host of frequent, lively parties at his and Annie’s comfortable house in Cambridge. Annie, more reserved and introspective, is a photographer. She is about to have her first gallery show after a six-year lull and is worried that the best years of her career may be behind her. They have two adult children; Lucas, Graham’s son with his first wife, Frieda, works in New York. Annie and Graham’s daughter, Sarah, lives in San Francisco. Though Frieda is an integral part of this far-flung, loving family, Annie feels confident in the knowledge that she is Graham’s last and greatest love. When Graham suddenly dies—this man whose enormous presence has seemed to dominate their lives together—Annie is lost. What is the point of going on, she wonders, without him? Then, while she is still mourning Graham intensely, she discovers a ruinous secret, one that will spiral her into darkness and force her to question whether she ever truly knew the man who loved her.

"A decade in the writing, the haunting story of a son's quest to understand the mystery of his father's death--a universal memoir about the secrets families keep and the role they play in making us who we are. Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family--and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood. Finally, roughly his father's age when he died, and a seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died after visiting friends, the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael's all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity--and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father's buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he'd imagined with the one he comes to know--and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother. A stirring portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets, After visiting friends is the story of a son who goes in search of the truth and finds not only his father, but a rare window into a world of men and newspapers and fierce loyalties that no longer exists"--Provided by publisher.

"This book is about dying, not about death. We are always dying a big, always giving things up, always having things taken away. Is there a person alive who isn't really curious about what dying is for them? Is there a person alive who wouldn't like to go to their dying full of excitement, without fear and without morbidity? This books tells you how." -- Front cover.

The John Edwards–Rielle Hunter affair made headlines for years. "One of the biggest political scandals of all time," "a fall from grace," "a modern-day tragedy"—it's a story that has been reported, distorted, and spun over and over again by the media, by political aides, by the U.S. government, by supposed friends. However, there is someone who actually knows the truth, someone who lived it from day one—the woman at the heart of the story itself: Rielle Hunter. In the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly bestseller What Really Happened, Hunter offers an extremely personal account of her relationship with John Edwards: the facts of how they actually met, how their accidental love started and escalated, what it was like to fall in love with a married man who decided to run for president, the surprise of becoming pregnant during the campaign, how the affair became public, the extensive cover-up, and finally, what happened in the years after Edwards publicly admitted to being the father of their daughter, Frances Quinn. Meet Edwards's political players and get an intimate look at how they really operated. Learn about the evolution of "friends," enablers, and do-gooders, their involvement with the affair and Edwards's 2008 presidential campaign, and where the money from Rachel "Bunny" Mellon and Fred Baron actually went. This book doesn't spin the truth to achieve a prettier picture or a better story. It isn't about changing anyone's mind. It's simply the facts, the truth of what really happened.

Smith chronicles the harrowing true story of millionaire dentist John Yelenic, his estranged wife wife Michelle, and the affair that ended with Yelenic's murder. photos. Original.