The Grift »

DEBRA GINSBERG is the author of the novel Blind Submission, as well as three memoirs: Waiting, Raising Blaze, and About My Sisters.

Marina Marks has been on the grift since she was a child, forced into the psychic business by a junkie mother who was always willing to use her daughter to scam an extra buck. But when Marina wakes up one day with the actual ability to see the future, she finds her freedom–and her life–in danger. After predicting a murder exactly as it happens, Marina becomes the sole suspect. Now she’s desperate to clear her name–and to discover the meaning behind her visions.

“[A] clever thriller . . . Ginsberg has a way with offbeat characters.” –New York Times Book Review

The New York Times - Liesl Schillinger

Ms. Ginsberg shows a remarkable capacity to inhabit the minds and motives of others, her mental camera panning impressively to take in not only a lead character or two but extras as well…Leaving aside any question of tingling paranormal subtext, The Grift presents a lifelike, multishaded rendering of San Diego's blend of cultures, classes, ancestries and motivations. Ms. Ginsberg folds Marina into the lives and complicated romances of the locals like a stripe of colored sand in a painted-desert souvenir bottle…The Grift is a gift with no strings attached, no dark outcome to dread, a satisfyingly voyeuristic vision of a mysterious stranger's supernaturally charged fortune.