As Francesca

Elaine, ambitious and hardworking, plays by the rules at the office so well that she's on the brink of an impressive promotion. But in the cyberspace world she visits every night as "Francesca," her daytime self disappears. On-line, her cool mastery gives way to abject obedience as the mysterious "Inez" seduces her into demeaning--and irresistible--sexual adventures. When a careless mistake destroys the barrier between virtual reality and her corporate life, Elaine perceives a disturbing connection between her nightly degradation and her professional success. As she becomes obsessed with finding her real-life paramour, her speculations about Inez's true identity quickly run wild, and soon all of her once-innocent encounters with friends and colleagues are charged with sexual overtones.

In a darkly comic, highly erotic tale for our time, Martha Baer captures the allure of anonymous cybersex and the elusiveness of gender identity in a world where the real and the virtually real become almost indistinguishable.