A Tess Durán Novel
COMING SPRING 2026
What’s left after someone dies… is her living.
Teresa Durán sells what the dead leave behind. So she knows exactly what’s happening when she sees an elderly woman’s home being sold out from under her while she’s still in it. She has no money, no legal standing, and eighteen days to stop it.
About the Story
Tess Durán is sixty, underemployed, and one slow month from broke. She runs estate sales in Tucson — cataloging, pricing, moving what’s left when someone dies. It’s honest work, and it’s all she’s got.
When a young woman begs Teresa to help her seventy-nine-year-old grandmother fight a guardianship petition filed by her own son, Teresa knows she should say no. She’s behind on rent. Her truck insurance just lapsed. Someone else’s family crisis is a luxury she can’t afford.
But the paperwork is wrong. Not sloppy — too clean. And when Teresa starts pulling courthouse records, the same names surface in a dozen other estates across two cities. The same companies. Undervalued. The same families who thought they were getting help.
Eighteen days to a hearing. No lawyer. No standing. No budget. Just a woman with a truck, a paralegal’s instincts, and the stubborn inability to look away.
About the Author
Debut author Vera Aguilar writes crime fiction set in the American Southwest, a region she has traveled for nearly thirty years. Her Tess Durán series is set in Tucson, Arizona.
Exhibit A: Abandoned is the first novel in the series.
Developed in collaboration with Adducent Story Studio.