THE ENDGAME

Chess is silence and intellect — two minds, a board, nothing hidden. And yet the quietest game has the most room for the unseen: the engine whispering moves no one can prove were heard, the prodigy pushed past breaking, the title arranged in a back room, the rating quietly rigged.

In these eleven stories, women at the margins of the game — an arbiter, a coach, a federation clerk, a scorer of correspondence games — notice the single move that doesn't belong and follow it, not with accusation but with proof patiently assembled. Suspense in the Sidney Sheldon tradition, where a game of perfect information becomes the perfect place to hide a lie.