UC Riverside

My Bonnie Lies is a darkly humorous novel of suspense, with an unreliable female at its center, told in multiple points of view.

Her story begins as she is fleeing a situation that has gone sideways. Stealing a boarding pass from a stroke victim in an airport ladies room, Bonnie takes the woman's place on a plane bound for New York. As fate would have it (and Bonnie is a big believer in fate), she is seated next to Griffin Sherwood, a delicate, neurotic academic. Unnaturally drawn to this little man "distilled to the essence" she pursues him to the sleepy northeastern college where he heads the English department.

Through a series of manipulations, Bonnie gains employment as the professor's housekeeper, and sets about insuring she is indispensable, while the professor's own private, furtive obsessions render him oblivious to her terrible crimes of devotion. As the villainy of Bonnie's past catches up with her, Griffin starts to suspect there is more to this simple, homely woman than appears. But he's become dependent on the way she smooths the rough edges of his life, and worse, she knows his most shameful secret.