They think they are buying her body. What she is actually selling is a mirror.

Cassandra Williams is dead. She was buried under the wreckage of a stolen academic career and a broken heart. In her place stands Aura: a polished, unfeeling construct of black silk and cold control.

Aura is a high-end specialist in the curation of fantasy. She does not offer sex; she offers a thesis. For the Architect, she builds a pillow fort of innocence. For the Judge, she becomes the defendant. For the Somatic Detective, she is a mystery to be solved in the dark. She collects these encounters like specimens, cataloging the hungers of the city's elite in a secret manuscript, proving over and over that she is the one holding the pen.

But the collection has a flaw.

As Aura moves from the brutalist penthouse of a billionaire to the dusty studio of a forger, the walls of her fortress begin to crack. A kind widower with a dangerous gift, a magician who offers a key, and a pair of renovators building a life from sawdust and sweat challenge her carefully curated detachment.

When the lines between observer and participant blur, Aura is forced to confront the one hunger she hasn't cataloged: her own.

Visceral, intellectual, and scorching hot, this is a story about the lies we tell to survive, and the messy, beautiful truth of what it means to be known.

While her writing often inhabits the sterile, psychological landscapes of the city, Isa Brevine prefers the mud and open air of the country. She is an author who loves to explore what makes people tick, translating the messy reality of the human psyche into fiction. She lives on a small farm where she cares for her horses, dogs, and chickens. Isa fuels her imagination with a steady diet of audiobooks, constantly seeking to get lost in new worlds, both real and fantastic.