The Understudy

By: Morgan Richter

Published by Random House, 2025-08-05

An opera singer uncovers the dark secrets of her cruel and alluring understudy when a murder disrupts her disciplined world. "The first time my understudy tried to kill me was on the day we met. We got off on the wrong foot, Yolanda and I, and while most of that was due to Yolanda being a very . . . complicated individual, some of the blame lies with me..." After years of rigorous instruction and ensemble work, Kit finally gets her big break when she’s hired to play the lead role in a new opera based on the 1960s cult classic film Barbarella. Entrusted with playing the beautiful and seductive titular role, Kit is on her way to the top of the highly competitive world of New York City opera. But then she walks into rehearsal and meets her understudy. Stunning, suggestive, and bursting with the unbridled confidence of a novice, Yolanda is physically everything Barbarella is meant to be. At first, Kit isn’t threatened by the neophyte, until Yolanda reveals that she wants the role—and will do anything to get it. As Yolanda's schemes become increasingly more reckless, she draws an unwitting Kit into her orbit. But when a brutal murder destabilizes the company and threatens her role, Kit discovers that Yolanda's glamorous veneer conceals something much more sinister. Hunting down the betrayed friends and discarded lovers from Yolanda’s past and unearthing secrets she’s worked hard to bury, Kit realizes just how far Yolanda is willing to go to get what she wants, and the number of enemies she made in the process.