My Immaculate Assassin

Fiction. Maura Nelson, who has a sophisticated background in science, medicine, and programming, has stumbled upon a way to execute someone using only the computers in her home office–silently, anonymously, leaving no trace of violence, so that her target appears to have died of natural causes. Maura tests her method by eliminating Syrian tyrant Bashar al-Assad, but this experience affects her so deeply that she doesn’t want to continue alone. She entices Jack Plymouth into a partnership to rid the world of those they decide need to be dead. Both a steamy romance and a cyber-thriller, MY IMMACULATE ASSASSIN raises disturbing and timely questions about the technology and morality of idealistic murder, carried out remotely.

A vividly striking yet subtly nuanced portrait of a family’s past and future emerges despite, or perhaps because of, a present mired in perplexing uncertainty and assured grief. A marvel.–Booklist

A profoundly moving meditation on death, on a great and unsentimental familial love, on the role of storytelling, and on how hard it is to say goodbye to a beautiful life.–Jane McCafferty