The Lair: A Sinner's Grove Novel

After her playboy father dies in a racing boat mishap, innkeeper Daniela Dunn must travel from Northern California back to Verona, Italy and her childhood home, an estate called the Panther’s Lair. To say she’s reluctant to go is an understatement. In fact, she’s petrified. The mansion she grew up in holds terrifying memories and deeply buried secrets. It’s a place where appearances are deceiving and the price of honesty could be death.

Complicating matters is the fact that her flirtatious friend, Detective Gabe de la Torre, is tagging along—without being asked. “I don’t need a babysitter,” she complains, and is even more upset when she learns Gabe has his own secret reason for following her to Italy. As Dani is drawn into her family’s intrigues, Gabe proves he’s much more than a friend, however. He’s a sworn protector who may lose his own life in the process of saving hers.

Gabe de la Torre needs to settle old family debts before starting fresh with the woman he feels could be The One. But when a mystery woman reveals that Dani’s father may have been murdered, the stakes rise dramatically and Gabe realizes they’re now players in a treacherous game. Keeping Dani safe becomes his top priority, even as Dani strives to figure out whom she can trust: her relatives, Gabe, or even herself.

The Lair, a stand-alone novel, follows on the heels of "Sinner’s Grove," the foundational novel for A.B. Michaels’ far-reaching romantic suspense series of the same name. “Sinner’s Grove” centers around the family, friends and associates of a world-famous artists’ retreat on the coast of northern California. "The Art of Love," an award-winning historical romance, recounts the founding of the retreat by Klondike King August Wolff and artist Amelia Starling at the turn of the twentieth century. Both "Sinner’s Grove" and "The Art of Love" are available on Amazon.