The Hand That Feeds You: A Novel

An Amazon Best Book of July 2015: Thirty-year-old Morgan Prager is working toward a degree in victim psychology, engaged to Bennett, a seductive but mysterious man she met online, and living with her three dogs, including two rescued pit bulls, in Brooklyn. One day Morgan returns home from class to find her dogs covered in what looks like blood. She follows them into the bedroom where she stumbles upon Bennett’s corpse torn limb from limb, presumably by the dogs themselves. Grief-stricken and traumatized, Morgan sets out to inform her fiancé’s family of his horrific death. No sooner than she peeks behind her lover’s veil of mystery does Morgan discover that everything he told her was a lie on top of a lie — from where he was born, to where he lives, to what he does for a living. Worse yet, Morgan learns that she wasn’t the only woman caught in Bennett’s demented web. But when the others turn up dead one by one, Morgan’s search for answers takes a startling turn: No longer is hers a quest for closure, but an every-second-counts struggle to stay alive. If not Bennett himself, then who is killing the women who love him? Is Morgan next? Urgent, shocking and impossible to put down, The Hand That Feeds You is a seductive, satisfying psychological thriller about attraction, deception, and the extent some people will go to get what they want. Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment (A.J. Rich) have crafted a novel that begs to be devoured but tastes even sweeter when consumed slowly, sentence by gripping sentence. – Andrew Eisenman