What Remains of Me

December 21, 2015
Gaylin (Hide Your Eyes) smoothly alternates between past and present in this melodramatic Hollywood whodunit. In 1978, aspiring actress Catherine Lund, frustrated by her lack of acclaim, leaps to her death from an overlook in the San Gabriel Valley. Two years later, her fraternal twin sister, Kelly, high on pot and coke, shoots director John McFadden to death in his Hollywood Hills mansion and is sentenced to 25 years to life for murder. In 1995, Kelly marries Shane Marshall, the son of movie star Sterling Marshall, in the California women’s prison where she’s incarcerated. After Shane’s mother, Mary, helps Kelly to get paroled in 2005, the celebrity criminal begins working for a website aimed at those seeking to cheat on their spouses. In 2010, Kelly again becomes a murder suspect, after her father-in-law is gunned down. The path to the truth—both about Sterling’s murder and McFadden’s—takes many surprising twists, though readers should be prepared for a lack of sympathetic characters. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents.

December 15, 2015
Gaylin's new stand-alone is a Hollywood story: beloved actor Sterling Marshall has been murdered, and his daughter-in-law is a prime suspect. As a teenager in 1980, Kelly Lund was convicted of killing Oscar-nominated director John McFadden at a wild wrap party at his house in the Hollywood Hills. Poor kid Lund had been hanging out with McFadden's son, Vee, and Bellamy Marshall, the daughter of another Hollywood big shot, actor Sterling Marshall--friendships her mother disapproved of since Kelly's twin, Catherine, died in a plunge into a canyon that was ruled a suicide after she started running with this fast crowd. Fast-forward 20 years: Kelly has served her time and married her former friend Bellamy's younger brother, Shane, and they live in the desert outside LA. Their marriage is rocky since Shane is addicted to sleeping pills and Kelly is sleeping with their oddball neighbor, a sculptor who calls himself Rocky Three. Bellamy has made a name for herself as an artist with a piece based on Kelly called Mona Lisa, "which features a seven-foot-tall version of the iconic 1981 photograph taken of Lund outside the Los Angeles courthouse." The book has some pacing problems in the middle, and Kelly's character is a cipher, but Gaylin is excellent at reproducing the TMZ-style blog posts and news articles that surround sensational crimes. Also strong are the flashbacks in which former misfit Kelly starts hanging out with cool kids Vee and Bellamy, learning how to do drugs and cruising around in their fancy cars with a perfect 1980s soundtrack. A rich read.

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September 1, 2015
Rising 17-year-old star Kelly Michelle Lund is jailed for killing Oscar-nominated director John McFadden, but her conviction is called into question five years after her release. From a Shamus award winner and "USA Today" best seller; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

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