Chosen People

When Alex Powell stops into a Los Angeles bookstore on a rainy spring night, she's planning to write a column on the author who is reading and signing books there. But what she gets instead is a firsthand look at the murder of a controversial African American writer. James Simpson Lee Hastings's death sends seismic shock waves through Los Angeles's black and white elite, and reveals how some of the city's well-to-do are connected in ways they'd rather leave unmentioned. But trying to unrave...