DELIBERATE CRUELTY

Spanning five decades and set at the highest heights of Manhattan's cafe and literary societies, this is the story of two murders, two suicides, and the strangely intertwined fates of socialite Ann Woodward and literary superstar Truman Capote.
For fans of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Empty Mansions, and The Furious Hours.

It begins with the famous 1955 Woodville murder (novelized by Dominick Dunne in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles) in which New York's Harvard-educated banking heir Billy Woodville was killed by his wife Ann. Ann was a showgirl who had moved to New York after escaping a destitute childhood in Kansas, hoping that she could be "somebody." After having an affair with Billy's father, she was handed off to Billy, who didn't want to marry the proper socialites his mother put before him. His mother hated Ann, and Billy and Ann's abusive and alcohol-fueled marriage almost ended many times because of his constant infidelity. The night of the murder, Ann and Billy attended a party for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, where Ann told anyone who would listen that she was afraid of a prowler who had been robbing neighborhood mansions. Later, she was awakened in the night by a crash, grabbed the shotgun by her bed, saw a shadowy figure in the hall, and shot him. It turned out to be her husband.

The lengthy investigation, society scandal, and custody battle over their two children made for major publicity and eventually attracted the attention of Truman Capote, coming off the success of his true crime bestseller In Cold Blood. Like Ann, his mother had come to New York from "nowhere," wanting to be "somebody." He became obsessed with Ann's story and the world in which she lived. While he never completed the book Ann inspired, Answered Prayers, he did publish an excerpt, the story "La Cote Basque, 1965," in Esquire in which he betrayed all of his society sources, confidantes, and friends. It was an act of literary self-sabotage from which he would never fully recover. Ann learned that the story of Billy's murder was the centerpiece of "La Cote Basque" and killed herself just before its release.

From the plains of Kansas to the nightclubs of New York City, from extravagant parties at sprawling North Fork country estates to Manhattan's cafe society, this epic tale of class divide, literary ambition, the corrupting lure of wealth, and culture's dangerous preoccupation with social relevance makes for fascinating reading, capturing both a lost era and themes all-too resonant for our times.

Roseanne Montillo is an accomplished research librarian who earned her MFA from Emerson College and has taught creative writing at Emerson and the Tufts Extension School. Her three evocative books of narrative nonfiction, Fire on the Track, The Wilderness of Ruin, and The Lady and Her Monsters, have been published to critical acclaim. Fire on the Track was optioned by DreamWorks, with Kennedy Marshall (Seabiscuit, Lincoln) producing.