A Date You Can't Refuse » (Unabridged)

HARLEY JANE KOZAK is an actor whose screen credits include Parenthood, The Favor, and Arachnophobia. She is the author of Dating Dead Men, Dating Is Murder, and Dead Ex. She lives in Agoura Hills, California.

Wollie Shelley isn't happy about taking the job as a “social coach” at MediaRex, but the FBI makes her an offer she can't refuse. If she agrees to infiltrate the company, they'll guarantee that her schizophrenic brother will have a home at the federally subsidized halfway house he's come to love. But when a coyote-chewed corpse appears in the MediaRex compound, Wollie realizes that her colleagues are concealing some serious secrets of their own.

Publishers Weekly

Wollie Shelley-reluctant dating expert, graphic artist and fledgling spy-goes undercover for the FBI to investigate MediasRex, a California media training company, in Kozak's wild fourth caper (after 2007's Dead Ex). The company's owner, Yuri Milos, hires Wollie to be a social coach and dating surrogate for such clients as clownish Zbiggo Shpek, a Moldovan heavyweight boxer. Wollie's FBI agent boyfriend, Simon Alexander, is alarmed, even if her three-month gig will pay $50,000, since Yuri has dangerous Eastern European political connections. Inside MediasRex's Calabasas compound, Wollie learns that the previous dating coach, Chai, a former America's Next Top Model contender, was killed in a car accident, though Chai's boyfriend insists she was murdered. Kozak keeps the laughs and chills in bewitching balance as Wollie uncovers the secrets of Yuri's extended family-and suffers a first-time dating consequence in the surprising denouement. (Mar.)

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