Matthew Klein

A strange, last-minute phone call convinces Mitch Traiger to change his career plans and come work for a Greenwich hedge fund after college, rather than a boring Midwestern engineering firm. The money is impossible to turn down - and so Mitch comes east, dragging his reluctant wife, Sara.Not long after starting the new job, he falls under the spell of a mentor, Turk Cain, who seems to have everything that a kid from the Midwest could dream of: a stunning house, a sailboat, an island retreat off the coast of Maine, and a beautiful, volatile wife. Everything about Turk Cain's life is perfect, and - to Mitch's delight - Turk is willing to share it all with Mitch - willing to share everything: his inside knowledge of office politics, his house in Maine, even his wife, Grace. It happens on a summer night, over a long booze-filled weekend, the two couples agree to a swap: The young innocent couple from the Midwest, the beautiful rich couple from Connecticut. Just one night. Just one time. What could go wrong? Only everything. When Mitch wakes the next morning, his world has been changed. Soon he finds himself in a trap, and the choices he has made seem worse than misguided and mistaken. They seem deadly.

Jimmy Thane knows all about crossroads. Every time he's been faced with one he's taken the wrong path. At the peak of his career, he chose alcohol. When his job became shaky, he turned to drugs. And when his wife lost faith in him, Jimmy went looking for other women. Now Jimmy's clean and he's at a new crossroads. He has one last chance to save both his career and his marriage - he has seven weeks to turn round a failing company. In return, Jimmy lands the job of CEO and he and his wife get to start over. This time he knows which path to take. Except, from the moment he enters the building, he senses there's something very wrong - the place is too quiet, too empty. When the police come calling about the disappearance of the former CEO, Jimmy begins to wonder what he's got himself into. Then he discovers surveillance equipment in his neighbour's house, looking straight into his front room. And he begins to notice that his wife isn't just tired, she's terrified and trying to hide it. Nothing is as it seems. Jimmy no longer feels like he's living the dream - instead he's plunged into the worst kind of nightmare there is. And when he finally gets to the truth, it's more shocking and terrifying than you could ever imagine.

Losing everything after spending five years in prison, con man Kip Largo finds his life taking an odd turn when Lauren Napier, wife of billionaire venture capitalist Ed Napier, asks him to help steal her husband's money, a job that Kip turns down, until his son shows up requesting his assistance in dealing with the Russian mafia. A first novel. Reprint.