March - May 2004

The Honey Well
by Gloria Mallette

Money has put Arnell Rayford’s mother, Ester, exactly where she’s always wanted to be—comfortably ensconced in the sixteen-room Victorian mansion where her own mother had worked as a housekeeper. Now she’s running a thriving business that’s surely making the previous owner turn in her grave. For Ester, money is the root of all happiness, and nothing and no one will stand in the way of her making it however she wants to make it—not even her only child.

While some may call Ester’s live-in employees prostitutes, she prefers to call them “ladies of charm”—or tenants, if the police come sniffing around. There are no laws against renting out rooms, after all. Of course, there are laws against pimping one’s own underage daughter. It’s a devastating secret Arnell and Ester have kept for years—years that have brought them far from the poverty they suffered after Arnell’s father died.

But Ester’s greed simply replaces one kind of suffering with another. No amount of money can make up for the trauma and shame she’s forced upon her daughter. And despite Ester’s promise that Arnell can quit after college, it seems she’s never quite free of her mother’s grasp. Ester calls the job “favors,” but Arnell knows them for what they are: demands couched in blackmail.

Now that Arnell is engaged to a pillar of the community, Ester’s latest favor may well send her over the edge—but she won’t be going alone. Because while Ester is holding her daughter’s past overhead, her own life is coming back to haunt her—a life where the lines between love and hate, parent and child, sex, profit—and even murder—have been irreparably, dangerously blurred…

About the Author

Gloria Mallette is the author of four novels. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and son. She is hard at work on her next book. Readers may contact Gloria via Web site at www.gloriamallette.com