"The Understudy" by Morgan Richter with Lucy Gilmore

"The first time my understudy tried to K*ll me was on the day we met. We got off on the wrong foot, Yolanda and I, and while most of that was due to Yolanda being a very . . . complicated individual, some of the blame lies with me..."

An opera singer uncovers the dark secrets of her cruel and alluring understudy when a murder disrupts her disciplined world.

We are so excited to bring back Morgan Richter for her new novel, "The Understudy"! Morgan will be in conversation with local author Lucy Gilmore (aka Tamara Berry). You can pre-order the book NOW!

Thursday, August 14th at 7PM at Auntie's Bookstore
(402 W Main Ave)

This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP via https://auntiesbooks.com/event/2025-08-14/understudy-morgan-richter


About the book

After years of rigorous instruction and ensemble work, Kit finally gets her big break when she’s hired to play the lead role in a new opera based on the 1960s cult classic film Barbarella. Entrusted with playing the beautiful and seductive titular role, Kit is on her way to the top of the highly competitive world of New York City opera. But then she walks into rehearsal and meets her understudy. Stunning, suggestive, and bursting with the unbridled confidence of a novice, Yolanda is physically everything Barbarella is meant to be. At first, Kit isn’t threatened by the neophyte, until Yolanda reveals that she wants the role—and will do anything to get it.

As Yolanda's schemes become increasingly more reckless, she draws an unwitting Kit into her orbit. But when a brutal murder destabilizes the company and threatens her role, Kit discovers that Yolanda's glamorous veneer conceals something much more sinister. Hunting down the betrayed friends and discarded lovers from Yolanda’s past and unearthing secrets she’s worked hard to bury, Kit realizes just how far Yolanda is willing to go to get what she wants, and the number of enemies she made in the process.


About Morgan Richter

MORGAN RICHTER is the author of The Divide. A graduate of the Filmic Writing Program at the University of Southern Califor­nia’s film school, she has worked in production on several tele­vision shows, including ABC’s America’s Funniest Home Videos and E! Entertainment Television’s Emmy-winning comedy series Talk Soup. She is an avid popular culture critic and the author of Duranalysis: Essays on the Duran Duran Experience. Richter currently lives in Seattle.


About Lucy Gilmore

Lucy Gilmore is the author of 18 books across 3 different genres. She began her career as a romance author and now writes both upmarket women’s fiction (as Lucy Gilmore) and cozy mysteries (as Tamara Berry). Lucy graduated from Eastern Washington University with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature before deciding to eschew academia for the more thrilling world of love, murder, and mayhem. In 2023, she was awarded the first-ever Lilian Jackson Braun Award at the Edgars for her cozy mystery Buried in a Good Book. This was the same year that her women’s fiction novel The Lonely Hearts Book Club was chosen as the April Barnes & Noble Fiction Pick of the Month. Her work has been translated into 13 languages and received several starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus. Both she and her work have appeared in such publications as Mystery Scene, Women’s World, USA Today, NPR, and The Spokesman-Review.

You may also like the following events from Auntie's Bookstore:

• This Tuesday, 22nd July, 09:00 pm, VIRTUAL: Afternoon Book Club in Spokane, Washington
• This Saturday, 26th July, 06:00 pm, Queer & Weird Book Club in Spokane
• Next Friday, 1st August, 07:00 pm, 3 Minute Mic in Spokane

Also check out other Arts events in Spokane, Literary Art events in Spokane, Entertainment events in Spokane.