After Dark

A race of aliens once lived on the future Earth colony called Harmony, leaving behind them the ruins of a vast, beautiful, and mysterious culture that is still protected by the psychic illusion traps and eerie ghosts that they created. Lydia Smith is an archaeologist who can resonate and dissolve the illusions, and those talents, combined with her lack of finances and questionable professional reputation, make her the obvious hire for Emmett London, who is trying to track down a lost antique and the nephew who stole it. Lydia's first consulting job quickly turns dangerous, however, as corpses, ghosts, and illusion traps start popping up--not to mention the rather unprofessional electricity between her and her first client. In After Dark, author Jayne Ann Krentz, writing as Jayne Castle, describes a world that delightfully intertwines futuristic ideas like green-glowing marble, psychic amber, and six-legged pets with earthly characters like penny-pinching bosses, absentee landlords, and mafia wives trying to turn into high-society dames.