Book excerpt: An author's mysterious disappearance. A pugnacious hired gun holding a pug for ransom. Charlee must find them both before the deadline expires.Charlee Russo's career and bank account will be DOA unless her literary event with bestselling author Rodolfo Lapaglia succeeds. It's her very last chance to revise her life. But when she goes to fetch him from the train station, he has disappeared, much like Charlee's royalty statements. An angry mob wants their refund from the cancelled event, but Lapaglia kept the money and stuck Charlee with the bills. As she searches for him and his checkbook, her neighbor's pug, Peter O'Drool, is dognapped with an ominous demand that Charlee deliver Lapaglia if she ever wants to see the beloved pooch again. Can Charlee solve the mystery of Lapaglia's disappearance and close the book on this fiasco before Peter O'Drool runs out of time?