An art professor goes from predator to prey in this debut thriller. In 2018, Max Durant, a once-acclaimed but now fading artist and art professor, is on a weekend trip to middle-of-nowhere Maine with Audra Colfax, his genius mentee. His plan? See how her thesis is getting along and finally consummate the sexual tension he's sure has been sizzling between them since they met. Audra, on the other hand, is getting ready to spring a trap she's been laying for years, with Max at the center. In 1988, a young instructor who goes by Juniper has returned to the Lupine Valley Arts Collective, a small camp in Maine that caters to artists of every type, and she's ready to relax back into a place that's like a second home. The addition of a new townie to the artist mix starts to shake things up, though, and Juniper's closest friend, Moss, is acting strangely. As all three will find out, the Lupine Valley is beautiful and hides its secrets very well. Exploring the story through Max's, Audra's, and Juniper's points of view, as well as descriptions of Audra's thesis, lets the narrative unfold easily and keeps the momentum up. This is much more of a howdunit than a whodunit; a curious reader will easily put the pieces together as they read. However, despite it being rather clear why things are happening, the question of how things are going to happen drives the reader forward. How is Audra's trap going to unfold? What exactly did Max do to warrant this seeming revenge? And what happened between 1988 and 2018 for it to come to this? The ending will satisfy. A dark tale of relationships, ambition, and revenge. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Lattari (American Vaudeville) makes her thriller debut with a complex, deeply disturbing tale of vengeance. In 1988, Juniper returns to King City, Maine, to resume teaching at the Lupine Valley Arts Collective, a sleepaway camp for aspiring artists. There, Juniper befriends Coral, the newly hired cleaner who also dreams of becoming an artist. It becomes clear that Coral is mentally ill, and as Juniper tries to intervene to help Coral, tension builds among Juniper's circle of friends. One night, two people witness a death in the woods, and secrets remain buried until 2018, when Audra Colfax, a Boston Institute for the Visual Arts graduate student, plots her revenge. The alluring Audra invites her thesis mentor, the pompous, womanizing artist Max Durant, to travel with her to her home in Maine. Readers will soon pinpoint Max's role in the death 30 years earlier, though he's not as quick to ascertain Audra's true intentions for inviting him to Maine. After a slow start, the plot gains momentum and builds to a chilling conclusion. Those who are comfortable with a cast of morally ambiguous characters will best appreciate this one. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (Sept.)

DEBUT An artist's vision is everything, even if it's tinged with blood red. Audra Colfax is a gifted young painter whose mentor and professor Max Durant has agreed to spend a weekend with her at her home, deep in the woods of Maine. The purpose of Max's trip is ostensibly to advise Audra on her graduate school thesis paintings, but he's more interested in pursuing the sexual spark he senses between them. He can't wait to get to know Audra intimately, but she has her own agenda for a weekend of reckoning. Thirty years previously, a group of artists had attended an annual retreat in rural Maine. A close-knit clique formed, made up of painters and two of the locals who worked at the retreat. Some looked for inspiration, some looked for love, and one was searching for sanity. A crucial question hung in the air: was artistic inspiration more important than life itself? Now Audra exposes the devastating remnants of the past in a deadly game of hide-and-seek. VERDICT Lattari's unreliable narrator pivots between present and past. This vengeful tale that pits artistic genius against mental health and happiness will captivate fans of dark suspense.--K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX