Blood Rubies

Seven days are all it takes for Rune Sarasin's life to completely derail. It starts with a typical heist: lifting a pouch of rubies from the Bangkok hotel room of wealthy smuggler Charles Lemaire. Rune nearly gets caught and Lemaire's goons give chase, but they are no match for the clever motorbike maneuvers of Rune and her boyfriend Kit. As the high of the chase wears off, Kit delivers some terrifying news: his teenage sister Madee has gone missing. They track her cell phone to the dangerous Khlong Toei slum, but the trail ends there. The night gets even worse when Rune realizes she lost the pouch of gems somewhere in the slum while searching for Madee.

Charles Lemaire is the wrong man to mess with. He is a perfectionist when it comes to both his attire and his crimes, and he isn't afraid to kill to get what he wants. When he catches up to Rune and Kit, he gives Rune an ultimatum: return his rubies or she will never see her boyfriend again. Now Rune must race against time to either recover the lost gems or find something even more valuable with which to ransom Kit back from Lemaire. But she also still needs to find out what happened to Madee. As Rune investigates deeper into the shadows of the Khlong Toei slum, she uncovers a web of crime with consequences far more insidious than just one missing girl and a handful of stolen rubies.

Hurtling from the back alleys of Bangkok, Thailand, to the glamorous auction houses of New York City, Mailan Doquang's heart-pounding debut will leave readers questioning just how far they would go for the ones they love.