The first Natalie Ratcliff book, Baggage, hit shelves in 2005. Hemingway Publishing put out a modest initial press run for the debut, but threw a weighty promotional campaign behind the book. A quirky mystery featuring Peg Perugo—an out-of-work, heavy with Baggage female protagonist who finds love in all the wrong places as she stumbles her way through criminal investigations before nabbing the bad guy—Baggage found an audience. Natalie Ratcliff’s debut became a word-of-mouth publishing phenomenon, and six weeks after it was published the book found the best-seller list. Three weeks later it made it to the top. Foreign rights poured in and the book marched around the world, climbing best-seller lists in every country where it was published. It sold a staggering eight million copies, and made Natalie Ratcliff (and Peg Perugo) a household name. The only book mighty enough to knock Baggage from the top of the New York Times list was its sequel, Hard Knox, which went on to sell eleven million copies. Natalie Ratcliff, once an emergency room physician, quickly grew bored of medicine and waiting rooms filled with sick patients. Concentrating on writing, Natalie pumped out one novel a year and became the best-selling fiction author of the decade. Today, over one hundred million Peg Perugo novels had sold worldwide.

Natalie was spending the summer finishing her sixteenth manuscript, the final in a three-book deal with Hemingway Publishing. Each time Natalie neared the end of a contract, publishers made pitches to Natalie’s literary agent about why she should leave Hemingway and publish with their imprint. Hence, the Escalade parked in front of the Lake Norman mansion. Hemingway Publishing had no intention of letting their top-selling author slip through their fingers. Hemingway had discovered Natalie Ratcliff and her peculiar but lovable protagonist, and Hemingway planned to keep them both. The Escalade may as well have been a Brinks truck.

Kenny Arnett had been the CEO of Hemingway Publishing for more than a decade and had an impressive knack for retaining his A-list authors. Diane Goldstein had edited every Natalie Ratcliff book ever published and felt that she knew Peg Perugo personally. Years before, Diane had taken a chance on Baggage after several other houses passed. Many industry insiders scoffed when Hemingway offered $2 million for Natalie Ratcliff’s third and fourth books, believing Peg Perugo had run her course and that the follow-ups would go the way of many overpriced genre books—big price tag and little return. In retrospect, $2 million turned out to be a bargain for what the books returned. Fifteen books later, Peg Perugo was an unstoppable force with a massive following who loved her flawed personality, her padded midsection, and her ability to outsmart—by accident or otherwise—the baddest of the bad guys.