The Spider on the Ceiling

Dr. Anna Newsom is a thirty-one-year-old forensic psychologist whose passion is defending women who have been sexually abused and have gone on to murder their abusers. When Anna was thirteen, she herself was raped, and the trauma had two long term effects. It was the motivating force in her decision to become a forensic psychologist, but it was also the event that triggered within Anna the gifts of an empath - the terrifying ability to feel and experience the suffering of her clients. When the story opens, Dr. Newsom is traveling to England to promote her new book - a compilation of five of her most dramatic cases. As the tour is coming to an end, Anna is reluctantly drawn into the case of fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Barrett who has brutally murdered a local dairy farmer, accusing the dead man of serial rape. Without physical evidence of such and using techniques that she herself pioneered, Anna seeks to prove Elizabeth's innocence while she herself endures the indescribable torment of her client. In the end, the case will finally demonstrate to Anna's outspoken skeptics that the human mind, when experiencing extreme physical and emotional agony, can transcend the laws of nature.