Beatrice Richards was 39 years old on her last birthday. That may have been accurate, it might not have been. It mattered not to her friends—of which she had only a few—and it certainly didn’t matter to her husband, in large part because he simply didn’t care. Beatrice was wealthy, entitled, snobbish, unhappy and bored. That is until “it” came.

“It" was an old-fashioned chain-letter that came in the mail one day, which she instantly mocked and derided. Infuriated with the sender for wasting her time, she fired off another one anonymously to a rival—primarily to irritate her—and then was shocked, perhaps pleased, that ill-fortune befell the recipient for breaking the chain.

Realizing she now had power to enact vengeance on her enemies, Beatrice becomes proficient in the dark art of chain-letter writing. The power—if it was indeed real—begins to derail the woman’s sanity and launches a slow but certain descent into madness. But there is a price to pay for her odd obsession as she comes to believe that she holds the levers of control over the lives of others while, at the same time, it clearly is consuming her own life.

Each book in the “Tales of Suspense” Series is a standalone story and not connected to the others. Listeners can jump in at any point.