On the morning of her thirtieth birthday, ex-con-turned-paparazza Nina Zero scales the Malibu hillside above the estate of a reclusive film star who hasn't been seen in a decade. Within the next few hours, a mysterious gunman shoots her, a deadly brushfire almost smokes her, an arson investigator accuses her, and a toothless Rottweiler adopts her as his new best friend. Accompanied by the toothless Rott, Zero goes on the hunt, compelled to prove that someone else set fire to the star's estate to keep the cops from jailing her for arson and -- when charred bones are discovered in the ashes -- murder. The killers are equally interested in finding her, and their desperation escalates to a bone-chilling series of violent encounters in which Nina plays hunter one moment and prey the next.

A death in the family reunites ex-con turned paparazza Nina Zero with her long-lost sister, who now touts herself as a successful real estate agent from Seattle. Who cares if the sister looks like she's lived a life as battered and fake as the designer-brand luggage she totes? With an abusive father and sweet but distant mother, Nina has been estranged from her family for so long she's happy to have a relative she can talk to. And Nina is too busy to question her sister's tale, because an altercation with a has-been Hollywood action hero leaves her with a concussion, two broken cameras, and a hot lead in the grandmother of all tabloid stories- -- the mysterious thefts of celebrity bones from graveyards around the country.Are the bone robbers kids playing games with the devil? Cult scientists intent on cloning dead movie stars? Or members of the Church of Divine Thespians, a shadowy Hollywood sect that may be plotting some unholy ritual? In the world of tabloid reporting, the i...

Robert Eversz's edgy and endearing heroine Nina Zero is back...and this time she's embroiled in her most dangerous case ever -- investigating L.A.'s underground S&M scene while getting caught up in sex, lies, and babysitting. It's opening night of Nina Zero's first gallery show, and her staged photographs of Hollywood pulp scenes are attracting the interest of actual art connoisseurs, not just the usual gossip rag readership. But the excitement of the evening shifts to alarm when Nina receives an anonymous package containing an amateur bondage video that may have ended in death. As she and her editor at Scandal Times watch the rape and strangling of a young woman, Nina Zero recognizes a distinctive tattoo on the woman's right shoulder, and suddenly realizes why one of her models has missed the opening. Who sent the tape? And more important, what happened to the woman? Nina starts investigating her model and discovers a parallel life of S&M phone sex, blogs written in...