Teller — Frederick Weisel

"The thing about hitting bottom is that, in the middle of it, sometimes you don't know if you're really hitting bottom or just bouncing off ledges on your way further down." Charlie Teller is a ghostwriter of best-selling celebrity autobiographies, until an affair and a fraud destroy his marriage and career. He's given a rare chance to start over, but just as he begins, Charlie finds himself the only witness to a friend's murder and is drawn into the investigation. Now someone has Charlie in his sights, and Charlie doesn't know if it's Eddie Mahler, a wise-guy police detective, or Vincent, a laconic ex-Special Forces soldier, or Kenny McDonald, a once famous pop singer turned deranged coke dealer. And, as he uncovers the truth of his friend's life, Charlie is brought face to face with his own past, remembered through his association with the subjects of his books: an aging novelist, a rock musician, a film star . . . Set in the towns and back roads of Northern California wine country, Teller is a mystery and a surprising novel about the meaning of memoir and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.