cover image Someone Is Watching

Someone Is Watching

Joy Fielding. Ballantine, $27 (384p) ISBN 978-0-553-39063-6

This engrossing standalone from bestseller Fielding (Shadow Creek) makes you care about Bailey Carpenter, a Miami-based investigator who’s raped while on surveillance. Previously, the biggest problems in Bailey’s life had been her mother’s death, her affair with a married colleague, and her five half-siblings’ attempt to overturn their father’s will, which left millions to Bailey and her often-stoned brother, Heath. Now Claire, a nurse as well as the half-sister Bailey barely knows, becomes her guardian angel as she starts on her slow path to recovery. Not sleeping and afraid to leave her high-rise apartment, Bailey suspects every man of evil intent, and she has a number of encounters, both frightening and embarrassing, in her quest to re-establish some control over her life. The characters pulsate with life, and there are a few shocks in store—for Bailey and the reader—before the denouement. And the presence of Jade, Claire’s outspoken teen daughter, blows everyone else off the page. Agent: Tracy Fisher, WME Entertainment. (Mar.)