Forty years' accumulation of art, antiques, and family photographs are more than just objects for Stanley Peke--they are proof of a life fully lived. When a con man steals his houseful of possessions in a sophisticated moving-day scam, Peke wanders helplessly through his empty New England home, inevitably reminded of another helpless time: decades in Peke's past, a cold and threadbare Stanislaw Shmuel Pecoskowitz eked out a desperate existence in the war-torn Polish countryside.

Jonathan Stone writes his books on the commuter train from his home in Connecticut to his advertising job in midtown Manhattan. Honing his writing skills by creating smart and classic campaigns for high-level brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, and Mitsubishi has paid off, as Stone's first mystery-thriller series, the Julian Palmer books, won critical acclaim and was hailed as "stunning" and "risk-taking" in Publishers Weekly starred reviews. He earned glowing praise for his novel The Cold Truth from the New York Times, who called it "bone-chilling." He's the recipient of a Claymore Award for Best Unpublished Crime Novel and a graduate of Yale, where he was a Scholar of the House in fiction writing.