THE RIBS
In early 2018, Drew Torrens, a family attorney with almost no criminal experience, returns to her hometown to defend her estranged best friend’s husband, who is accused of starving a man to death. Drew knows she isn’t the right person for this case. Not only is she inexperienced in criminal law, but she’ll be defending the man who once weaponized the police against her. Drew wants to win and leave, with the good deed in her pocket and no more obligations to play nice.
But Drew knows better than anyone how long a body can go without. And soon, the case drags her back into everything she desperately wants to run away from: the custody case that broke her, her debilitating relationship with food, and the violent incident that fractured her friendship and kept her away in the first place.
Long before Drew can admit it to herself, she knows where the evidence is pointing. And when she finally reaches the truth, it leaves her nowhere to stand. The confession that would guarantee her client’s acquittal is the one that would destroy her friend, and saying nothing means bargaining a man’s life.
THE RIBS is an 81,000-word upmarket suspense that uses starvation as a lens on what women are made to go without. It will appeal to readers of I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, The Whispers by Ashley Audrain, and Megan Abbott’s El Dorado Drive.