She's on the glinting edge of East-West confrontation, a beautiful and accomplished scholar who has suddenly become the new US ambassador to an Iron Curtain country, a woman who is about to dramatically change the course of world events – if she lives.

For Mary Ashley has been marked for death by the world's most proficient and mysterious assassin, and plunged into a nightmare of espionage, kidnapping and terror. Only two people – both powerfully attractive and ultimately enigmatic men – can offer her help. But soon she comes to believe that one of them is out to kill her.

Sidney Sheldon, whose highly successful writing career spans over 50 years, has garnered international praise and recognition in four diverse fields. The winner of an Oscar, a Tony, and an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, Sheldon has over 250 television scripts, twenty five major motion pictures, six Broadway plays and fourteen novels (with sales figures well over 200 million) to his credit, ranking him as one of the world’s most prolific writers.
One of the top three bestselling authors alive today, Sheldon is also one of the few major authors to have all his novels filmed as major motion pictures or blockbuster mini-series for television. His novels are published in 56 languages, including Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Korean, Hebrew, Greek and Indonesian, in 100 countries worldwide.
A master storyteller, Sheldon regards his becoming a writer as something of a miracle