When Angela Shilliday discovers she isn't up to the task of authoring the biography of Dr. Andrew Povitch, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, she hires Nell Bane to ghostwrite the book. As they work, Nell begins to learn that her client, who appears to have everything, still wants more. Angela, in fact, wants everything and will apparently exceed all boundaries to get it. As the writing project proceeds, Nell Bane finds herself a reluctant witness to human ambition, deceit and grief. Ethics, psychology and intrigue are the hallmarks of a Nell Bane novel.

Stuart Hammer hires ghostwriter Nell Bane to write a "word portrait" of his wife Ramona O'Hara-a companion piece to the oil painting he has commissioned from Nell's artist friend Ann Fitzmaurice. As they work, the women discover that Hammer not only idolizes his wife, but he idealizes her. And as they peel back the story to reveal the truth, they expose a reality that is quite different from the story Hammer imagines. And when reality and idealism clash, Nell finds herself with an ethics problem that spirals down into scandal.