The bowl is already broken

by Mary Kay Zuravleff

"Promise Whittaker, the diminutive but decisive acting director of the Museum of Asian Art, is pregnant again - and that's just the beginning of her difficulties. Her mentor, the previous director, suddenly walked away from his job with no explanation, and now is on a dig somewhere in China's Taklamakan Desert. Her favorite curator has dropped their newest treasure, a porcelain bowl once owned by Thomas Jefferson, down the museum's stairs. Another colleague, desperate for a son, has been embezzling from the museum to pay for her fertility treatments. And Promise's far too handsome, far too elusive ancillary director is clearly up to no good."