Very Bad Things

When Lester Filch sets his clock ten minutes fast, he doesn't just ruin his morning-he changes the course of his life. His mistake brings him face-to-face with Beatrice Goodie, a home health aide determined to redeem him, and back into the sights of Arthur Medlar, Beatrice's jealous ex-fiance. What begins as a small accident spirals into obsession, deception, and poisoned tea.

Darkly funny and unsettling, Very Bad Things is a literary novel about fate, goodness, and how the worst mistakes sometimes save us.

A mistake of ten minutes sets off a chain of accidents that no one can control.

Lester Filch has never been ahead of anything in his life-until the morning he sets his clock ten minutes fast. That small error sends him crashing, literally, into Beatrice Goodie, a devoted home health aide whose kindness borders on blindness. Beatrice believes Lester can be saved. She reads his journals back to him, editing out the ugliness, rewriting him into the man she wants him to be.

But not everyone wants Lester redeemed. Arthur Medlar-Beatrice's wealthy former fiance-cannot stand being replaced. Charming in public and ruthless in private, Arthur plots to unmake their fragile connection. His pride twists into obsession, and obsession curdles into something poisonous.

What begins as an unlikely romance becomes a dangerous game of timing, deception, and mistaken cups of tea. In the end, no one can tell whether what happens is justice, tragedy, or simply absurd.

Darkly funny and morally piercing, Very Bad Things is a literary novel about fate, goodness, and the accidents that shape our lives-for better and for worse.