Close Relations

Description

It was a situation from which half-hour television comedies are made. "Marcia! In tonight's episode, Marcia Green's warm and winning and wise and wonderful Jewish family reminds her that she is thirty-five, divorced, and childless."

That's Marcia on her close relations. True, she's one of the best speechwriters around in the tough world of New York's smoke-filled rooms, but her family wants something else for her. No, not that Irish person she's living with. Another doctor, or at least a dentist.

But Marcia claims she's happy, getting plenty of the two things that exhilarate her most: sex and politics. She's not looking for commitment, and certainly not looking for a wealthy Harvard-educated man-about-town who is every mother's dream. Yet as wise mothers everywhere are fond of saying: you never know.

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As Husbands Go: A Novel

Product Details

• Notes: Maker NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
• ISBN13: 9781416573081
• Mould: New

Description

Call her superficial, but Susie B Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten assumed her marriage was great—and why not? Jonah Gersten, MD, a Park Avenue plastic surgeon, clearly adored her. He was handsome, successful, and a doting dad to their four-year-old triplets. But when Jonah is found dead in the Upper East Side apartment of second-rate “escort” Dorinda Dillon, Susie is overwhelmed with questions left unanswered. It’s bad enough to know your husband’s been murdered, but even worse when you’re universally pitied (and quietly mocked) because of the sleaze factor. None of it makes sense to Susie—not a sexual liaison with someone like Dorinda, not the “better not to discuss it” response from Jonah’s partners. With help from her tough-talking, high-style grandma Ethel, who flies in from Miami, she takes on her snooty in-laws, her husband’s partners, the NYPD, and the DA as she tries to prove that her wonderful life with Jonah was no lie.

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Long Time No See

Product Details

• Big Time No See by Susan Isaacs
• First HarperTorch Paperback Printing July 2002
• HarperTorch, an imprint of HaperCollins Publishers
• Judith Chorus girl is Back! Susan Isaacs' Heroine from "Compromising Positions"
• ISBN-10: 0061030430, ISBN-13: 978-0061030437

Description

It's been twenty years, and Judith's life has definitely changed. Now a history professor and a widow, she hasn't seen Nelson Sharpe of the Nassau County Police Department in all that time. But she still can't get her one-time lover out of her head. Her life takes an unexpected turn, however, when former investment banker turned suburban mommy extraordinaire Courtney Logan vanishes from Long Island into thin air.

Everyone suspects husband, Greg, the darkly handsome son of flashy Long Island mobster Fancy Phil Lowenstein. Ever the good neighbor, Judith offers her services to Greg, but he shows her the door, thinking she's just a nut. His father, however, isn't so sure -- he just may have other plans for the wily Judith...

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In Susan Isaac's Long Time No See, Courtney Logan, former investment analyst, devoted mother, and Long Island housewife, leaves her home on Halloween night for a quick trip to the grocery store. Five months later, her badly decomposed body is found floating in the backyard pool, concealed by the pool cover.

Enter Judith Singer, who helped find a murderer in Isaac's 1978 bestseller, Compromising Positions. Something about the Logan case doesn't make sense to Judith, and she becomes so engrossed in the mystery that she actually knocks on the grieving husband's door and offers to help exonerate him. Long Time No See draws on the best of the light, character-driven mysteries, like those by Janet Evanovich and Mary Daheim. Isaac's first- person heroine is impulsive enough to get herself into trouble, yet thoughtful enough to invite confidences. And her voice is appealingly funny and honest. "Since becoming a widow," she reflects, when faced with a twist in her investigation,

I'd tried hard not to indulge in the lonely person's Happy Hour: talking to oneself. About a year earlier, in the drugstore, I found myself befuddled, dithering between a condom rack and a display of batteries, and was startled when I heard my own loud voice demanding: 'Why am I here?' But now I gave in and had a chat with me.

Although clever and well-written, the novel's real strength lies in its characterization and in Isaac's leisurely unfolding of the implausible dark side of the perky blonde murder victim. This is a welcome outing from a deservedly popular writer. --Regina Marler

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After All These Years: A Novel

Description

The day after her lavish wedding anniversary bash, Rosie Meyers gets a big surprise: her nouveau riche husband, Richie, is leaving her for a sultry, sophisticated, size-six MBA. So, when he's found murdered in their exquisitely appointed kitchen, no one is surprised to find Rosie's prints all over the weapon.

The suburban English teacher is the prime suspect -- the police's only suspect. And she knows she'll spend the rest of her life in the prison library unless she can unmask the real killer. Going into Manhattan on the lam, Rosie learns more about Richie than she ever wanted to know. And more about herself than she ever dreamed possible.

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Past Perfect: A Novel

Description

In Past Perfect, Susan Isaacs gives us one of her most glorious characters ever: bright, buoyant, and borderline luscious Katie Schottland. Katie seems to have the ideal life: a great husband, a precocious and winning ten-year-old son, and a dream job -- writer for the long-running TV series Spy Guys. But all is not as splendid as it should be because writing about the espionage business isn't nearly as satisfying as working in it.

Fifteen years earlier, Katie was in the CIA. She loved her job (to say nothing of her boss, the mysterious Benton Mattingly). Yet just as she was sensing she was in line for a promotion, she was fired -- escorted off the premises by two extremely hulking security types. Why? No one would tell her: when you're expelled from the Agency, warm friends immediately become icy ex-colleagues who won't risk their security clearances by talking to you.

Until that day, Katie was where she wanted to be. Coming from a family of Manhattan superachievers, she too had a job she not only adored but a job that made her, in the family tradition, a Someone. Fifteen years later, Katie is still stuck on her firing. Was she set up? Or did she make some terrible mistake that cost lives? She believes that if she could discover why they threw her out, she might be at peace.

On the day she's rushing to get her son off to summer camp, Katie gets a surprise call from former Agency colleague Lisa Golding. "A matter of national importance," says Lisa, who promises to reveal the truth about the firing -- if Katie will help her. Lisa was never very good at truth-telling, though she swears she's changed her ways. Katie agrees to speak with her, but before she can, Lisa vanishes.

Maturity and common sense should keep Katie in the bright, normal world of her present life, away from the dark intrigues of the past. But she needs to know. As she takes just a few steps to find out, one ex-spy who might have the answers dies under suspicious circumstances. Another former agent is murdered. Could it be there's a list? If so, is Katie now on it? And who will be the next to go?

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Shining Through

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780061030154
• Teach: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Atonement Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Description

It's 1940 and Linda Voss, legal secretary extraordinaire, has a secret. She's head over heels in love with her boss, John Berringer, the pride of the Ivy League. Not that she even has a chance--he'd never take a second look at a German-Jewish girl from Queens who spends her time taking care of her faded beauty of a mother and following bulletins on the war in Europe. For Linda, though, the war will soon become all too real. Engulfing her nation and her life, it will offer opportunities she's never dreamed of. A chance to win the man she wants...a chance to find the love she deserves.

Made into the movie of the same name starring Melanie Griffith, Michael Douglas, and Liam Neeson, Shining Through is a novel of honor, sacrifice, passion, and humor. This is vintage Susan Isaacs, a tale of a spirited woman who wisecracks her way into heroism and history--and into your heart.

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