In her 67th novel (following May's The House) bestselling author Steel (more than 530 million copies sold) fashions a plot around a single event: an invitation to a debutante ball in New York City. Attorney Olympia Crawford Rubinstein manages to juggle a challenging full-time job; a loving relationship with her second husband, Harry (an appeals court judge who is her former law professor); the care of their five-year-old son, Max, and her three older children from a previous marriage.
Jennifer Witt was abused by her husband, so who could blame her if she struck back? But when her husband is shot dead, she refuses to admit she killed him. Her lawyer believes her, especially since her adored son was also killed, but soon he begins to wonder if his judgement has let him down.
The narrator of Elizabeth Berg's Open House calls divorce "a series of internal earthquakes ... one after the other." She ought to know. Samantha is abandoned by her husband in the opening pages of this three-handkerchief special, and the resultant tremors keep her off-balance for most of the novel. There are practical problems aplenty, of course, including a shortage of money and an 11-year-old son to raise. But Sam's sense of emotional bereavement is far worse, despite the fact that her husband had been giving her the conjugal cold shoulder for years:
Like Bernard Cornwell, Hollick mines the richly textured history of Saxon England, producing a striking portrait of an unruly era poised on the threshold of major transformation. Married off to King Aethelred of England at age 13, Emma, daughter of the Duke of Normandy, far exceeds her value as a strategic female pawn, as she pledges her enduring allegiance to her adopted homeland. Despising her weakling husband, she and her children retreat to Normandy when England is invaded by the Danes. However, her all-consuming passion to save her country and retain her crown eventually leads her into the confidence as well as the arms of Cnut, Viking king of England.
In her sad, hopeful and very original debut, Hunt examines two battles with depression, one that has already been lost and one where there is still a possibility of winning. The story follows the parallel lives of a lonely young London librarian, Esther Hammerhans, and the celebrated statesman, Winston Churchill, during the days before he retires in July of 1964. Esther, whose husband committed suicide two years earlier, is renting out the spare room in her home, but when she opens the door to her new tenant, Mr. Chartwell, she finds herself face to face with a huge talking, upright walking, black dog.
