Vivien is not okay.

Vivien will never be okay.

Not in this lifetime.

Her deafblind nephew pulls the trigger. Her husband falls. The board shifts.

What follows isn't grief. It's awakening. Like a game she's played before-and lost.

A detective sees through her. And so does something older. Something darker.

Vivien, After is a mystery. A memory and a memory lapse. A reflex left over from a previous present. It's the sensation people get of having lived past lives. They may well have, but not in the past.

After the flood, after the cataclysm, after the splitting of the veil ... You won't be the same, after Vivien, After.

Grant Jerkins is the author of five novels, including the award-winning A Very Simple Crime, which The New York Times called "an extremely nasty study in abnormal psychology that dares us to solve a mystery in which none of the normal character cues can be taken at face value."