All Her Little Secrets
by Morris, Wanda M.






"Ellice Littlejohn seemingly has it all: an Ivy League law degree, a well-paying job as a corporate attorney...and a relationship with a rich, charming executive, who just happens to be her white boss. But everything changes...when Ellice arrives in the executive suite and finds him dead with a gunshot to his head...When she uncovers shady dealings inside the company, Ellice is trapped in an impossible ethical and moral dilemma"-





*Starred Review* Ellice Littlejohn grew up poor and Black in rural Chillicothe, Georgia, where she left a lot of secrets behind. Now a corporate lawyer with an Ivy League law degree in midtown Atlanta, she luxuriates in Italian sheets and a Prada coat. Sometimes she shares those sheets with her married white boss. That's a big lie to live, along with those she tells to keep her past hidden. "Every lie you tell, every secret you keep, is a fragile little thing that must be protected and accounted for," says Ellice. One frosty January morning, she arrives for an early morning meeting and finds her boss dead. What appears to be suicide is determined to be murder, and having been hastily promoted as his replacement, she becomes a prime suspect. The first-person narrative will hold the reader captive as Ellice struggles under a tremendous burden of moral and ethical issues, both personal and professional. Then comes danger, when she realizes something definitely illegal is going on within the company. Woven into the story is an eye-opening look at what it is to fight all the -isms of being Black and female in America. Ellice is a compelling and multidimensional hero in this must-have debut that will be embraced by all legal-thriller readers. Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.





A seat on the executive board should be a professional peak for a corporate lawyer. Instead, it's a life-threatening trap. Success hasn't been easy for Ellice Littlejohn. As a Black woman, she's dealt with barriers other lawyers haven't, especially in Atlanta, a city that, despite its vibrant and diverse present, hasn't shed its racist history. To rise, Ellice has carefully shaped her image-and left out certain pieces of her past, like her childhood in a small, grindingly poor Georgia town where some very bad things happened before she escaped via a scholarship to an elite boarding school. She has secrets in the present, too, notably her long-term affair with Michael Sayles, who is married, White, and her boss in Houghton Transportation's legal department. When he summons her for an early-morning meeting and she arrives at his office to find him dead, an apparent suicide, she keeps that a secret, too, leaving his body to be discovered by someone else. Ellice had no delusions about being in love with Michael-it was a colleagues-with-benefits situation for a woman focused more on her career than her personal life-but his death blows up her entire life. Among its least expected effects: She's promoted to his job as head of legal, which puts her on the board of a family-owned, almost entirely White corporation. Houghton has been under pressure about its lack of employee diversity, and her hiring should improve their optics. But she feels distinctly unwelcome on the board despite the support of company CEO Nate Ashe, a somewhat dotty Southern gentleman. The harder she looks into what really happened to Michael, the more she uncovers in the company that alarms her. At the same time, her own secrets are being revealed. Morris builds an escalating thriller plot packed with convincing details about corporate politics and skulduggery. She also provides a knowledgeable portrait of Atlanta's complex social structure. One of Ellice's secrets is Vera Henderson, the woman who raised her and her brother, Sam. Vera, once a fierce defender of children and women, is now a dementia patient in a nursing home, and Morris skillfully paints the loving, painful relationship between her and Ellice. Corporate competition is not only racist and sexist, but deadly in this confident debut thriller. Copyright Kirkus 2021 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.






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