This new twist on the expatriate novel, somewhere between mystery and ethics conundrum, with nods to Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad, and Paul Bowles, is about two very different men and their delayed but fated battle for retribution. Paul is a promising med student from the US wending his way through heady, corrupt and gorgeous Mexico City in the 1980s. Victor is a Mexican lawyer with a web of connections on both sides of the drug business, and Victor is Paul’s would-be cultural as well as underworld guide, who eventually betrays him. What happens when the former friend reappears twenty years later as a cancer patient in the doctor’s pathology lab shows that none of us can escape our secrets.   Flashing between the post-9/11 US and 1980s Mexico, The Cleansing details a love triangle, or diamond, if you will. Adele, a fearless American and photojournalist, attracts both Paul and Victor, and the three become uneasy friends. Mexico City itself is the fourth player in this game, beautiful and decadent, urban and cosmopolitan, torn between policia and narcos, with the division not as clear as the expatriates first think.  The Cleansing is about a reckoning of moral culpability in a corrupt setting. No matter our excuses, the past will come to find us.

No other obsession strikes as hard as the love that hits a teenaged boy -- especially if he's the sort of kid who is no saner than he wants to be. From the moment Adam Webb sees Francine Haggard--in the van that is supposed to return them to the Institute Loiseaux--the two young mental patients are inextricably connected. Adam will never let this girl go. From hiding her in his bedroom to spiriting her away to Minnesota's north woods, "Miss Entropia" becomes the focus of Adam's every thought and of everything he does. He believes her to be a goddess, his own goddess. But the pyromaniacal Miss Entropia will be neither worshiped nor owned. And so Adam's possessiveness is destined to push her to the breaking point. Theirs is an incendiary love story, an unbalanced Romeo and Juliet, that spins and arcs its way strangely toward tragedy.

The Wonder Singer is an operatic literary caper about one young writer's manic ambition. The ghostwriter's best chance at fame almost disappears when his Diva dies suddenly in her bath. His solution is to steal the tapes, liberate the Diva's aging husband, and write the autobiography on the run.

The Wonder Singer is an operatic literary caper about one young writer's manic ambition. The ghostwriter's best chance at fame almost disappears when his Diva dies suddenly in her bath. His solution is to steal the tapes, liberate the Diva's aging husband, and write the autobiography on the run.

This new twist on the expatriate novel, somewhere between mystery and ethics conundrum, with nods to Graham Greene, Joseph Conrad, and Paul Bowles, is about two very different men and their delayed but fated battle for retribution. Paul is a promising med student from the US wending his way through heady, corrupt and gorgeous Mexico City in the 1980s. Victor is a Mexican lawyer with a web of connections on both sides of the drug business, and Victor is Paul’s would-be cultural as well as underworld guide, who eventually betrays him. What happens when the former friend reappears twenty years later as a cancer patient in the doctor’s pathology lab shows that none of us can escape our secrets.   Flashing between the post-9/11 US and 1980s Mexico, The Cleansing details a love triangle, or diamond, if you will. Adele, a fearless American and photojournalist, attracts both Paul and Victor, and the three become uneasy friends. Mexico City itself is the fourth player in this game, beautiful and decadent, urban and cosmopolitan, torn between policia and narcos, with the division not as clear as the expatriates first think.  The Cleansing is about a reckoning of moral culpability in a corrupt setting. No matter our excuses, the past will come to find us.

No other obsession strikes as hard as the love that hits a teenaged boy -- especially if he's the sort of kid who is no saner than he wants to be. From the moment Adam Webb sees Francine Haggard--in the van that is supposed to return them to the Institute Loiseaux--the two young mental patients are inextricably connected. Adam will never let this girl go. From hiding her in his bedroom to spiriting her away to Minnesota's north woods, "Miss Entropia" becomes the focus of Adam's every thought and of everything he does. He believes her to be a goddess, his own goddess. But the pyromaniacal Miss Entropia will be neither worshiped nor owned. And so Adam's possessiveness is destined to push her to the breaking point. Theirs is an incendiary love story, an unbalanced Romeo and Juliet, that spins and arcs its way strangely toward tragedy.

The Wonder Singer is an operatic literary caper about one young writer's manic ambition. The ghostwriter's best chance at fame almost disappears when his Diva dies suddenly in her bath. His solution is to steal the tapes, liberate the Diva's aging husband, and write the autobiography on the run.

The Wonder Singer is an operatic literary caper about one young writer's manic ambition. The ghostwriter's best chance at fame almost disappears when his Diva dies suddenly in her bath. His solution is to steal the tapes, liberate the Diva's aging husband, and write the autobiography on the run.