* Emily Paulson is a bestselling, widely reviewed author with multiple published books, including Hey Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing (published by Row House/Simon & Schuster) and Highlight Real: Finding Honesty & Recovery Beyond The Filtered Life (published by Launch Pad Legacy).
* The Revenge Party is Emily's debut novel, a mix of suspense, humor, politics, and murder mystery, and a perfect book for her community and following.
* Emily has over 113,000 followers on IG, over 7,000 followers on Substack, and The Revenge Party IG page already has over 37K followers.
* Emily's last book was reviewed by Laura McKowen and Sarah Edmondson and was featured in NPR, The Atlantic, and on "Juicy Scoop" with Heather McDonald and "Next Question" with Katie Couric and Elizabeth Vargas.
* Rise Literary is building a significant marketing campaign, creating a digital murder mystery around the characters and storyline.
* Rise Literary has engaged Smith PR to manage all print, podcast, and online media and outreach.
Devoted mother and party planner Katherine Valentine thought she'd finally found her fairy-tale ending when she married Seattle's golden boy, Shane Sutton. But behind the philanthropist facade of this ruthless political strategist lurks a predator who collects women like trophies, and Katherine has become his latest prize.
Desperate to protect her children, Katherine devises the perfect plan: use Shane's mistress against him. But Isabella Meyer has her own agenda, one that runs far deeper than Katherine ever imagined, and revenge is only the beginning. The Revenge Party is a female-driven mystery that's one part "Fatal Attraction," one part "Wag the Dog," and one part "Mean Girls." Funny, irreverent, and absolutely to die for.
Release date:
May 12, 2026
Publisher:
Rise Books
Print pages:
256
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
Yesterday, I watched my husband walk out of the Thompson Hotel with his assistant. I wasn’t surprised; I’d known about her for months. What unsettled me was her face when she spotted me at the red light. Not fear, or avoidance. Guilt. The look of someone who’d already chosen a side.
She’d fallen for his lies, just like I had.
“Come on, it’s eight-thirty,” I called upstairs. Halfway into the school year, you’d think mornings would run smoother, but no. The kids inherited their father’s talent for lateness, no matter how many times I tried to drill in my mother’s singsong: If you’re not early, you’re late.
I opened the dishwasher and groaned at the chaos inside. Bowls stacked where glasses should go, utensils pointing dangerously upward. Everyone’s version of “help” always left me irritated, and lately, I fixated on these petty things instead of the marriage quietly destroying me.
The kids trampled down the stairs. “Quick breakfast, and then you need to get on the road,” I said, softening the nag with a smile. Elliott and Ethan seemed half-asleep. They shoveled food into their mouths, shoulders broadening before my eyes. I thought about how much smaller they’d been when Shane first entered our lives. We were all naïve then, though I didn’t have youth as an excuse. As the kids would say, this wasn’t my first rodeo.
“Emma, don’t get on 99 without stopping because you’re already past empty, and the light is on,” I told my daughter as she drowned a waffle with syrup.
“I know, Mom.” Emma rolled her dark brown eyes, lined with black, only made more dramatic by her new eyebrow ring. “God, you act like I’ve never driven a car before.”
“Because the last time you ran out of gas, you called me at midnight from the side of I-5.”
“That was one time!”
Their commute was thirty minutes each way, and I was the only one who seemed to care. Fail to plan, and plan to fail was another mantra my kids failed to pick up on.
“Elliott, Wilder’s mom will give you a ride home after Robotics. You can meet us at Ethan’s basketball game if you’d like,” I offered.
“Or you could just get your driver’s license,” Emma added. “Oh, wait, I forgot. You failed the test like four times.”
“Shut up, loser.” Elliott threw a muffin wrapper at his sister and missed, his aim as poor as his parallel parking skills.
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said, making a mental note to schedule him for an eye appointment. “You should get on the road. Gas station, Emma, and do not forget.”
“Mom, God, I got it,” she groaned, picking up her bright pink tote bag. The boys shuffled behind her.
I passed out bagged lunches with little notes tucked inside, pre-emptive Band-Aids for the turmoil they might soon face.
“Love. You. Three.” I leaned in to kiss each cheek. Ethan was the only one to accept my smooch. “Current favorite,” I whispered, earning a half-smile.
Choosing favorites was off-limits in theory, but it was our family joke, their standings changing by the day, sometimes the minute.
I waved as they climbed into Emma’s SUV and drove away. As the Puget Academy Cheer bumper sticker got smaller in the distance, my anxiety returned.
The house fell into that silence that used to feel peaceful, but now emphasized how alone I was with my thoughts. I turned off the stove, plated my breakfast, and waited for my husband. A fresh cup of coffee sat on the counter, ready for him. I pictured him upstairs choosing cologne that his assistant preferred, polishing himself for her, not me.
I was once told that if you put a penny in a jar every time you have sex as a newlywed, then take one out after your first anniversary, you’ll never empty it. With my first husband, Eric, this proved true. But Shane and I had electric chemistry; I would have bet on an empty metaphorical jar in no time. I mistook chemistry for commitment.
By the time our first anniversary rolled around, like clockwork, his excuses multiplied while his interest waned. Too tired, too stressed, early meeting tomorrow. I would wave off the unexplained late nights at work or his hiding the phone screen the second I walked by. Shane was a private guy. He preferred to remain behind the scenes, pulling strings rather than standing in the spotlight. Control lived in the shadows, and he liked it there.
I was rinsing dishes when Shane appeared in the kitchen doorway, scrolling through his phone. He wore the blue Oxford shirt I’d given him for Christmas, the one that brought out his eyes.
“The McFadden campaign needs some repositioning,” he said without looking up, as if I was interested in his latest client crisis. “Damage control.”
“Breakfast?” I gestured toward the extra egg, knowing he’d refuse, but unable to stop playing the perfect wife.
Intermittent fasting was his newest health craze, following the celery juice phase that ended a few weeks ago. Whatever the latest podcast guru promoted, he tried, so of course, we had a cold plunge out back, too.
“Thanks, this is good.” He raised his mug, sipping as he walked toward the door.
As he passed, he squeezed my shoulder. I went rigid. Don’t let him notice. Don’t give anything away.
“See you at Ethan’s game? 7:00?” I kept my voice light.
He gave me the wide, charming smile I fell in love with. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
That was the Shane I loved. The man who coached Ethan’s team and remembered my mother’s birthday. The man whose steady confidence felt like solid ground after years of instability. He’d made me feel seen when I was invisible, secure when I was deep in debt. Falling in love with that man was easy. Now it felt like the cable had snapped, because that man may have never existed.
Shane stepped outside, backed his too flashy for my taste Porsche down the driveway, and sped off. The dog nosed my knee, and for a moment, my anxiety settled.
“Where did you get that, you rotten girl?” I asked, high-pitched, pulling the chewed-up tube sock from Piper’s guilty mouth.
Piper loved socks so much that we’d had one surgically removed from her, but she hadn’t learned her lesson. I never thought I’d be one of those people to pay for dog sock-removal surgery, but Piper made me a dog person. I was pretty sure I liked dogs more than people.
“We will go for a walk after lunch, okay?” Piper wagged her tail as she followed me to my office, taking her rightful place on the plush bed at the foot of my desk. Specks of dust from her wagging tail danced in a sunbeam, rare for January, streaming through the panoramic window.
I sat and admired the expansive Seattle skyline. This house was a monument to Shane’s success with soaring ceilings, imported marble, and custom everything. When the kids and I first moved in, it thrilled us to have space to spread out during lockdown. I’d felt like an impostor, tiptoeing through rooms that belonged in a magazine spread. Maybe that feeling had been intuition rather than insecurity.
If I squinted, I could almost see our small two-bedroom across the bay on Alki Beach with the temperamental heater and forever-broken washing machine, where the kids and I lived before moving here. I’d felt sorry for myself back then, broke, divorced, single, with three little kids, focusing on what we lacked, that I hadn’t appreciated what we had: happiness.
My fingers absently twisted my wedding ring. “So, you’ll always remember you’re mine,” Shane had whispered when he slipped it on. I’d found it romantic then. Lately, I’d woken from nightmares where it had tightened in my sleep, cutting off circulation until my finger blackened and fell to the floor. Yet I wore it daily, both shield and shackle. Taking it off felt like a declaration I wasn’t ready to make.
What I couldn’t figure out was why he was keeping me around if he had found a new plaything? A new and improved version of me? Why hadn’t he left? That was the question and the problem, the reason I stopped myself every time I considered packing up and driving away: the prenup. I’d get nothing if I initiated a divorce: no alimony, no share of Sutton Strategy, nothing. The righteousness I once felt signing the document now sat like a chokehold. I suppose nobody marries with the end in mind.
But it wasn’t only money I worried about. Shane’s political connections ran deep. If I left him, would I be blacklisted from the social circles I relied on? Would the kids face backlash? I told myself I’d never blow up my children’s lives the way my parents had demolished mine, and they’d already endured Eric’s scandal.
Stop spiraling, Katie. I pulled my hair into a bun and scanned my calendar for the day. This afternoon, I had to finish details for a graduation committee meeting, a class party, emails to vendors, and hopefully make it to the gym in time for my noon class. Yes to committee chairs and bake sales. Yes, to Shane’s proposal after only a few months of dating, despite everyone’s warnings that it seemed rushed.
My phone buzzed, and a Google alert for Sutton Strategy filled the top of my screen. There had been more and more of them lately.
MODERATE REPUBLICAN MCFADDEN AND HIS NOT-SO-MODERATE-TAKES—SMART STRATEGY, OR SELLING OUT? – BY ANNA DOLLARHIDE
I frowned, clicking through to the article. The piece detailed McFadden’s latest comments on removing inappropriate books from school libraries, including several titles Elliott had recently done a report on for his AP Literature class.
I’d always ignored politics; what was the point in a blue state like Washington and an even bluer city? But Shane had dragged politics into our home, our dinner conversations, and my children’s classrooms. My eyes were wide open, and I couldn’t close them.
I’d watched him strategize and shift beliefs long enough to learn an important lesson: getting what you wanted sometimes meant playing by rules you hated.
I glanced at the clock. “I give up,” I told Piper, who hopped up after me, knowing I’d again given in to her furry charm when I grabbed the leash. “The party planning can wait, I suppose.”
I walked past Shane’s office on the way out the door. Locked. As always. He claimed it was because of confidential client information. I wondered what else was hidden inside.
We trotted down the driveway. “Wait, Piper, wait,” I begged as my impatient dog pulled my shoulder practically out of its socket, and another text popped up. It was Shane.
Going to be a late night with the McFadden team tonight, will miss the game, be home late. Don’t wait up. Love you.
That’s it. It was time to confront him about the affair. He was obviously smitten with this woman. He could be reasonable, despite the prenup, right? He’d never leave us high and dry, would he?
Before I could respond, another text.
Don’t forget to take your medication today. You seemed off this morning.
I glared at the screen, ice spreading through my veins.
I thought I had things handled, but I was running out of time.
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