Nemesis

Nobody would characterize Maggie Blackburn's life as particularly quiet or devoid of excitement. But the kind of excitement that comes from violence was definitely alien to a woman of her sensitivity and depth of feeling.

Suddenly, with a brutal act of rape, everything changes. Her civilized and sophisticated world is shattered.

It is not Maggie who is raped. It is Brendan Bauer, a young man who has come to the conservatory where maggie teaches to study under the renowned composer-in-residence Rolfe Christensen. Brendan's revelation of what has happened to him draws Maggie into a strange and fearful world. A world of sexual exploitation. And then of savage murder.

NEMESIS is a novel of noose-tightening suspense and mounting terror. But it is also the story of a woman's inner awakening in the midst of a deepening nightmare. Maggie learns not only of the secret lives of the seemingly respectable academics around her, but also of the power of her own repressed sexuality and need for human warmth. As one murder and then another draw her even more dangerously into a search for the killer, she becomes involved with two very different men—Brendan, the victim whose manhood has been called into question, and Calvin Gould, the handsome, dynamic head of the conservatory. Both invade her defenses, even though neither may be what he seems.

This magnificently crafted, high-voltage tale shocks at every turn. Someone is poisoned. Someone is strangled. But who is the executioner camouflaged within the groves of academe? That is Rosamond Smith's secret, and with the greatest ingenuity she witholds it until the very end of her stunning novel.