Promise of Ruin

Nominated for the Daphne du Maurier Award

*New, 2026 Edition*

New York City, 1907. Dr. Genevieve Summerford is cheering on her Tammany sweetheart at a rowing race on the East River when the body of a young Italian woman is found in the water, bringing the Independence Day festivities to a halt. Police chalk the death up to random violence, but when Genevieve is asked to help find Teresa Casoria, another young Italian woman who's gone missing, she suspects something more sinister is afoot.

As she searches for clues to Teresa's whereabouts, Genevieve is shocked to learn of the traps that lie in wait for unsuspecting immigrants at the city's ports and terminals-traps designed to lure them into lives of terrible degradation, from which there is little hope of escape. Haunted by the stories of previous victims, she must draw on all of her skills as a psychiatrist to try to fathom the mind of a cunning predator and save Teresa from a similar fate. To find the young woman in time, however, her training won't be enough; she'll have to become far more intimately acquainted with a heinous industry than she ever bargained for.