Former ascetic John Chambers lies awake in his SoHo loft, counting the seconds while his wife, Clara Bell—antique‑quilt dealer, fearless sensualist—vanishes on a secret errand. He once walled himself off in silence, celibacy, Nietzsche, and classical music, until a dropped notebook led him to Clara’s Columbus Avenue shop and a life remade together: a private lexicon of impossible words, a loft with no hiding places, and a pact never to trespass the two closets that guard their final secrets.
A surreal Chinese‑food delivery jolts the night and crystallizes the question of what—or whom—she has chosen over their bed. Devotion shades into suspicion as John crosses the last boundary and opens her unflinchingly candid diary. Told in dueling voices over a single breathless night, Lying in Bed fuses erotic mystery, philosophical daring, and knife‑edge psychological suspense to test whether love can survive absolute knowledge.
- “One of the most uninhibited and intensely sexy novels to appear in some time…exerts an almost hypnotic attraction.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
- “Memorable…off-center insight into human behavior that a more conventional approach couldn’t touch.” — The Washington Post
- “Funny and unexpectedly erotic, [it] describes a connubial bliss of manic intensity.” — New York Times Book Review
- “Startling meditation on the psychology of desire.” — San Francisco Examiner
- “The most erotic novel I’ve read in years.” — Vanity Fair
- “Superb. Highly suspenseful.” — St. Petersburg Times
- “Mesmerizing.” — Vogue