Telling Stories

Friendship, freedom, booze, and student loans: the glory days of student life. For Liz, Cora, Mike, and Stevie, students at Cardiff, their circle was a surrogate family, bound together for three years in total trust. Post-graduation the group "stays in touch" with growing distance, but eventually reunites, with Mike and Cora returning to live in Cardiff. The foursome paints the town, marking Stevie's birthday in an orgy of nostalgia, when from nowhere, a beautiful—and younger—flame-haired girl appears. "Jenny" knows their names, but her identity's a total mystery to them all, or so Liz and Cora think. When Jenny is found dead, foul play presumed, Liz is assigned to cover the story. She finds herself caught up in an expanding web of lies as Jenny's death is traced back to that fateful night. The ancient secrets of their college days begin to catch up with them all.

Full of surprises, this murder mystery subverts and reinvents the chick lit genre in a darker shade of lipstick, marking the emergence of a major new voice.