She Fell Away

Romance author Nash (Can’t Get Enough of the Duke, as Lenora Bell) pivots to thrillers with this arresting page-turner about 18-year-old American singer Bowie Bishop, who goes missing while studying abroad in New Zealand. When U.S. diplomat Lake Harlowe fields a frantic call from Bowie’s mother at the U.S. embassy in Wellington, Lake, who’s embraced the nomadic life of a diplomat as a means of escaping unresolved trauma back home in Alaska, is already grappling with another PR nightmare: the hours-old discovery of dead NFL quarterback Bruce Walter from an apparent overdose in his Airbnb. Lake’s preliminary digging into Bowie’s disappearance reveals that the teen’s mom works at a Las Vegas casino owned by Bruce’s father. The plot thickens when Lake’s new boss, a political appointee with an appetite for barely legal young women, presses her to back off from both cases. But that’s not an option for Lake, who feels an affinity with the missing teen. With the help of a hunky police sergeant, she investigates both cases in secret, exposing a web of connections that appears to link powerful predators across the globe. Though the plot flirts with implausibility, Nash, a former Foreign Service officer, crafts a provocative thriller helmed by a series-worthy protagonist. Readers won’t be able to put this down. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, CAA. (Mar.)