Bait and Switch

Isabelle Chilton Chandler, Chicago-based author of a successful women’s mystery series, has always known exactly what she wants and how to get it. But when she starts working on a new book, inspiration—for the first time ever is painfully out of her reach. Grasping at straws and under increasing pressure from her publisher, she starts to construct a plot around a world that is familiar to her: horse racing. As Isabelle’s charming protagonist and alter-ego, Brenda Remington, starts to poke around a possible mystery involving racehorses used for diamond smuggling, mysterious circumstances start to arise in Isabelle’s real life.

Dead ends crop up everywhere Isabelle turns, and questions abound. Will Brenda solve her mystery? Why do characters from Isabelle’s book keep appearing in her real life? Who is the ghostly apparition that regularly visits her in her dreams? What about Isabelle’s ex-husband, Roger, with whom she has remained close—will they be able to reconcile? And then of course there is the conundrum surrounding a racehorse named Farolarr, which may just have been the perfect crime.

Fast-paced, heartfelt, and funny, Bait and Switch is an exploration of life’s largest commitments and a commentary on the ways we construct stories about who we are. With this work, the author of Risk Everything and It’s About Time invites readers to consider their own stories and the undeniable possibility of redemption.