Arsenic and Rio and After — D.J. Manly

When Marshall meets Hal, it's a match made in hell. Hal knows just how to manipulate a young man who is lost and wounded, desperate for love and acceptance. Hal is a former resident of the detention center where Marshall is incarcerated. He knows that the unscrupulous director is deeply in debt with the mob. When the director is asked to do the mob a favor in exchange for his life, he turns to Hal and begs him for help. Hal recruits Marshall to help him carry out his scheme, which will bring them both to the mountains of Brazil. Marshall is supposed to seduce and rob the handsome young owner of a coffee plantation, but when he sees Angelo Farelli, a man equally alone, Marshall is the one seduced by a man who will finally teach him the true meaning of love. Arsenic and Rio sweeps the reader away to a coffee plantation high in the mountains of Brazil and to the warm sands of Rio where passion and despair link and the ultimate end is murder.

Book two of Arsenic and Rio will revisit Angelo and Marshall several years later when they are living in different parts of the world. Marshall has changed, left his jaded past behind and life would be perfect if he could just stop dreaming about Angelo. In spite of his new business and new lover, one thing has never changed. He's never stopped loving the enigmatic Angelo Farelli. And just like the evil, manipulative Hal Makin brought Marshall and Angelo together years before, he will bring them together again, in a way no one could ever have imagined.