Kiss of the Wolf - Hardcover

When this spare, suspenseful tale opens, Joanie Mucherino has recently been abandoned by her husband, and she is trying to cope while dealing with her eleven-year-old son, Todd, and her comically tactless and intrusive Italian family. To complicate matters, Joanie is now "available" in the eyes of Bruno Minea, a family friend with shadowy connections whose twenty-year passion for her has been flattering but faintly frightening. All of these relationships are transformed one night when Joanie and Todd kill a pedestrian in a hit-and-run accident and then discoverstep-by-step, to their horror - that they will keep the act a secret. As the tension between them mounts, it becomes clear that Joanie not only has entangled her son in a web of guilt but also has enmeshed the two of them in a slowly closing net of suspicion and terror.

Jim Shepard teaches at Williams College in Massachusetts.