THE LAST PERSON

Eleanor Voss has spent fifteen years reducing human lives to facts. Names. Dates. Achievements. Deaths. As senior editor of the Hammond Biographical Dictionary, she believes that everything can be classified, verified, and put in its proper place. Then she finds a name where no name should exist. It appears after the final entry in the alphabet. It has no history, no dates, no explanation. Eleanor deletes it. The next morning, it is back. This time it has a birth year. Soon it has an address. An education. A career. Memories in the minds of people who swear they have known him for years. The dictionary is no longer recording reality. It is writing it. And the more Eleanor tries to erase the stranger, the more complete his life becomes. Before the final edition goes to print, she must decide how far she is willing to go to stop a person who should never have existed. And whether existence is really something an editor has the right to correct.