Posthumous

Anna Corrigan, the daughter of the late movie star and entertainer Mavis Edwards, has spent years trying to deal with the emotional fall out from the decades she spent with her often difficult and neurotic mother. Anna attends her sister Estelle's singing showcase at a tiny supper club uptown, where she encounters some of her mother's "friends" from the past. These include a crooked business manager named Louie Mayhew; her old co-star Jerry Giddings, who has fallen on hard times; her bitchy rival Marjorie Easterbrook; choreographer "Busy" Borroway, an unrepentant child molester who numbered Mavis Edwards among his victims; and George Kelker, a director who refused to hire Mavis Edwards for an important production many years before. George is only the first of these individuals to be horribly murdered by a crazed female intruder who, Kelker's wife insists, looks just like Mavis Edwards! There had always been nutty stories in the tabloids about Mavis Edwards being alive and hidden in a sanitarium and with all these reports of a crazy lady who resembles her beginning to surface, Anna wonders if it could possibly be true. But as the murders continue and Anna finds her life unraveling, she learns that the truth is far more terrible than she could ever even imagine. WILLIAM SCHOELL is the author of several novels in the suspense field, including VICIOUS, LATE AT NIGHT, THE PACT, SAURIAN, THE DRAGON, SHIVERS, THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT, MONSTER WORLD and FATAL BEAUTY. In addition to books on pop culture and the performing arts, Schoell has written several best-selling celebrity bios, including MARTINI MAN: THE LIFE OF DEAN MARTIN and JOAN CRAWFORD; THE ESSENTIAL BIOGRAPHY (with Lawrence Quirk).