Claire Winters can communicate with the dead. What she can't seem to manage is her own life.
By day, Claire is a psychic medium in the sun-drenched beach town of Carmine Beach, Florida - connecting grieving clients to the loved ones they've lost and somehow making it all look effortless. She has a beautiful condo, a loyal (if chaotic) secretary named Andrea, a devoted boyfriend who flossed his perfect teeth more than any dental hygienist, and a white Persian cat named Angel. Life is quiet. Comfortable. A little too comfortable.
Then a man in round sunglasses walks into her nail salon.
He turns up again at Starbucks. Then at her office, asking for a reading under a fake name. And when Claire connects with his grandfather's spirit - and the old man shows her a Lincoln Continental, a dark alleyway, and a gunshot - the mysterious client walks out without a word.
His name is Angelo Santoro. He's an attorney from Miami. And the family he works for is not the kind you resign from.
What begins as an unconventional client relationship slowly becomes something far more complicated - and far more dangerous. As Claire is drawn deeper into Angelo's world, the signs she's spent her career reading for others start appearing in her own life: a Buddha shifted two inches from its place, scratch marks around her keyhole, a man standing outside her balcony at 3 a.m. And somewhere between the ferris wheel and the yacht, between the kiss she shouldn't have allowed and the choice she can't take back, Claire realizes that the spirits have been trying to warn her all along.
Cardinal Choice is a warm, witty, and propulsive debut about love, loyalty, and the courage it takes to start over - from the woman who talks to the dead and is only now learning to listen.
