Ransom's Voice

An intriguing and suspenseful debut psychological thriller for fans of Girl, Interrupted and Unsane.

Dominique Stein is beautiful, young, and Jewish. Her sanity is overly dependent on external cues, chameleon-like. She awakens every morning at 5:59:59. She weighs in at exactly 111, her snug palindrome. These are the routines that keep her safe. Then, it all explodes. She desperately searches to find her way back inside that cozy bubble of sanity she had constructed.

Lost, her bearings off and wobbly, Dominique can’t trust her instincts. Crimes are committed; not everyone survives. Found not guilty by virtue of temporary insanity, she is sent to a psychiatric prison for women. There she is caught between the kind, serene Freudian analyst, Dr. Haddad, and the head of the institute, the manic, megalomaniacal Dr. du Chevre, who offers her the Faustian contract: be the subject for his secretive, odd research, and he will get her out of prison earlier. Dominique has to navigate her way out of this institutional maze and the random, explosive violence of the prison by deciding which doctor she can trust—or whether they are both manipulating her for their own strange motives . . .

In this psychological thriller, Gary Dvorkin crafts a compelling story of love, betrayal, and reality-shifting anxiety. Dominique hears many voices in her life. But which one can she trust? Which voice will ransom her sanity?