Red Death
by Lisa D'amour

Meet Jane Whithers, a trained kindergarten teacher and certified lifeguard who has become sidetracked from her professional pursuits by a self-imposed existential quest: She is searching for the origin of hate, the root of denial, and the basic human weakness that causes us to fear death.

She suspects the source might lie in one Mr. Prospero Albright, a childhood acquaintance from Grass Lake, Michigan.

Follow Jane around the world in seven scenes filled with life rafts, spiked cocktails, underground dance clubs, and childhood secrets as she searches for the one man who understands why her life has gone down such a perilous path.

One part Raymond Chandler, one part Kafka, and one part Kurt Vonnegut, Red Death is a 21st-century riff on Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death -- a dark, often hilarious roller-coaster ride through the fears and anxieties that simmer beneath the surface of everyday lives.