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"A breezy read that quickly turns into a pulse-pounding thriller... Thom Racina has written an exciting winner." ---Harriet Klausner @bookbrowser.com
"A suspense lover's dream."
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"Secret Weekend"SOME PEOPLE LIVE FOR THE WEEKEND... ONE WOMAN WILL DIE FOR IT. She has planned the perfect weekend... To persuade her boyfriend to propose, Audrey Goh kidnaps him. Her destination: the unfinished luxury apartment building that she owns on Hawaii's scenic coast -- where she will fulfill his wildest fantasies. The state-of-the-art security system will make sure no one else gets in -- or out.
But someone manages to slip by the security system. Someone who has been watching -- and waiting -- for Audrey for years. He wants her all to himself. And everyone knows that three's a crowd.... |
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SECRET WEEKEND – THE STORY THAT WOULDN'T DIE! When I was writing the daytime drama Another World, I spent a day wandering around Manhattan (as I often did) thinking up story ideas. I found myself at a new condo building on the Upper West Side, where there was a model apartment to preview. A sucker for dreaming of the apartment I'd have in NYC one day (never lived there, though I spend a lot of time there and many friends are there), I went up to see it–in a construction elevator, complete with hard hat. On a high floor, I stepped into the one finished, lavish apartment–the rest was girders and open air. They'd finished the one condo as a showplace before the rest of the building to impress potential buyers (well over a million dollars each). And I was. Impressed, not a potential buyer. But I got a great idea out of it: the girl who sells the apartments wants to get away for a secret weekend, just flee from all the pressures of the boyfriend, parents, money, etc. Because she can't afford to go anywhere, she locks herself in the building till Monday morning when the construction crews will again arrive. She has a palace in the sky all to herself, complete with champagne and whirlpool tub, romantic fireplaces, classical music, a kitchen brimming with food, all the luxuries you could possibly want, plus peace, quiet and privacy. The only thing she doesn't count on is that the psychopathic construction guy who has been watching her for months knows she's in there–and there is no way out . Another World didn't do it because we couldn't build the sets, and the story demanded a chase through floors and on the girders. I put it away for years. In 1997, I pitched an idea for a movie to a great lady named Ricka Fisher, who was running Disney's TV movie division at the time, and she was not wild about whatever it was. "What else do you have?" she asked. I pulled Secret Weekend out of my back pocket. I got a deal to develop it, and did so, but it never got made. When NAL wanted a paperback original thriller last year, I resurrected it yet again–and here it is. But it's changed. It is set in Honolulu and Hong Kong, the heroine is Chinese-American, and she's not alone in the building but with her boyfriend, with whom she wants a romantic, private time without the interruptions of his work and cell phones ringing so that he'll propose to her, because she has just learned she's carrying his child and she doesn't want him to marry her for that reason. What she doesn't know is that they have chilling company–not one but two other men. I wanted the publisher to do a tag line like: "One woman, Three men. One wants to love her. One wants to kill her. One wants to save her." Or something like that. What they came up with on the cover is even better: REST. RELAXATION. REVENGE. It goes on sale on November 15, 1999 at bookstores everywhere, and at barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com, of course.
Buy an autographed copy of SECRET WEEKEND!
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