Misfortune
by Nancy Geary

A recluse on Long Island's humbler North Fork, Suffolk County star prosecutor Frances Pratt returns home to Southampton and her dying father. What she finds are friends and family guarding closely held secrets and an overprivileged community unwilling to admit anyone but their own. Though a shrewd and skillful lawyer, she is utterly unprepared for what comes next. In the marbled powder room of the "old money" Fair Lawn Country Club lies the murdered body of her own stepmother, Clio Henshaw Pratt.

Frances takes on the investigation and soon unearths more than a few people who had hated Clio with enough force and venom to murder her. Her sights fix on the respected African-American heart surgeon smarting from Clio's prejudice—the long-faithful partner frozen out of the family investment firm—the highborn idealist whose vision of the Fair Lawn Country Club's future left no room for Clio's snobbery—the dissolute socialite who feared what Clio knew about her husband's suicide—and even somebody closer to Frances than she had ever imagined.

As Frances begins to look beneath the gilded surface of Southampton, she delves into a world of crumbling pretenses, cruel prejudices, and the terrible burdens people bear to "keep up appearances." Ultimately, she discovers that she, as well as everyone in her family, has a fagade. And as she searches for Clio's killer, Frances Pratt will have to face the demons that stand behind them all.

Other Books by Nancy Geary

Regrets Only

Redemption

Nancy Geary's Bio

I was born in New York City. Other than a year at boarding school when I was constantly homesick, I was educated in Manhattan and graduated from the Spence School, an all- girls school on the upper east side. Because my parents were divorced, I split my summer vacations between Southampton, New York, where my father had a home, and Manchester, Massachusetts, where my great-grandmother lived.

I graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1987 where I studied American History and "Law, Ethics and Public Policy," an independent concentration the curriculum for which I designed myself. My honors thesis on AIDS in the pediatric population won the Minnie Helen Hicks prize. I then went to Harvard Law School. During law school, I represented indigent defendants through the Harvard Defenders program, taught constitutional law at a nearby public high school and was a teaching assistant for an undergraduate ethics course.

After graduating cum laude, I spent four years as an Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Bureau of the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office. I initially did appellate work, but later prosecuted public corruption, insurance fraud and financial crimes. I also spent six months in the Lowell District Court as part of the Urban Violence Strike Force prosecuting primarily drug and domestic violence cases. I had the chance to work with a wonderful group of assistant district attorneys and dedicated police officers, including one cop who pursued a fleeing felon on a tricycle and caught him! As difficult as the work was, the days were exciting. Lowell District Court is still the scene of my most vivid legal memories, both successes and failures.

I went into private practice briefly at a large Boston law firm before quitting my legal career to try to write. I enrolled in several graduate seminars, participated in workshops on various aspects of writing, wrote lots of short stories and read constantly. Then one day on a vacation in Turks and Caicos, the idea for Misfortune came to me. I couldn't sleep and scribbled notes in a travel guide and on pages of my day planner. I completed the book about a year and a half later and, in the process, came to think of Frances Pratt as a real friend.

I recently moved from Cape Cod to Westchester County. My son and I live with our two Labrador Retrievers in a house built in 1790. It has crooked floors, uneven walls and a basement that fills with water every time it rains, but we love it. I am currently at work on my second novel to be completed this fall.