They say a book can change your life. They never warned Arthur Penwright that it could end it.

Arthur Penwright was a nobody—an IT guy with a fading dream and a stack of rejection letters. Then came the breakthrough: a three-book deal, a penthouse overlooking the Charles River, and the kind of literary fame that makes the world feel small.

He had finally escaped his shadow. But in the digital age, shadows have a way of catching up.

It begins with a single one-star review. Then a second. Soon, a coordinated, venomous campaign titled The Silent Judge tears his reputation to shreds. Overnight, Arthur is a pariah—his contract voided, his fans turned into a digital lynch mob, his voice silenced by the very internet that once lifted him up.

Retreating to a decaying studio, Arthur taps into the elite cybersecurity skills his fame had forced him to bury. He builds EchoArchive, a weaponized digital dragnet designed to unmask his tormentors. He wants exposure. He wants justice. He wants to dismantle their lives just as they dismantled his.

But the game has changed.

The people on Arthur’s hit list aren't just losing their jobs. They’re losing their lives. At every crime scene, Detective Stephen Mercer discovers a chilling signature: a copy of Arthur’s debut novel, pages chemically charred and annotated in fresh blood.

To the precinct, the evidence is damning. To Mercer, the truth is far more twisted—the murders are playing out like a meticulously plotted manuscript, with Arthur cast as the lead in a story he didn’t write.

As the line between the screen and the street dissolves, Arthur realizes the terrifying truth: he is no longer the author of his own vengeance. He is a pawn in a masterpiece of ruin, and the secret buried in his own fiction is the motive for a killer who is always one chapter ahead.

In the world of Critics’ Requiem, the cost of a bestseller is a terminal sentence.

Critics Requiem: The Storyteller Shadow Series, Book One. From award-winning author Michaela Riley, comes a pulse-pounding thriller that proves the most dangerous fiction is the kind that bleeds into the truth.

How far would you go to protect your story?