"New York Times bestselling author Laura Thompson returns with Heiresses, a fascinating look at the lives of heiresses throughout history and the often tragic truth beneath the gilded surface. Heiresses: surely they are among the luckiest women on earth. Are they not to be envied, with their private jets and Chanel wardrobes and endless funds? Yet all too often those gilded lives have been beset with trauma and despair. Before the 20th century a wife's...

In 1893, Lucy Banning lives among Chicago's rich and famous on Prairie Avenue. Her family expects her to marry a banker from a well to do family, but she is fearful of having to give up her charity work and taking classes at the university. A meeting with an architect who is doing work for the upcoming World's Fair gives Lucy hope that she still may be able to pursue her own dreams.

A memoir of a singular childhood in England and India by the daughter of Lord Louis and Edwina Mountbatten. Pamela Mountbatten entered a remarkable family when she was born in 1929. As the younger daughter of a glamorous heiress and a British earl, Pamela spent much of her early life with her sister, nannies, and servants--and a menagerie that included, at different times, a bear, two wallabies, a mongoose, and a lion. Her parents each had lovers...

Young Marina Makarova finds herself on her own amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War -- pregnant and adrift in the Russian countryside, forced onto her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child. She finds new strength and self-reliance to fortify her in her sojourn, and to prepare her for the hardships and dilemmas still to come. When she finally returns to Petrograd, the city almost unrecognizable after two years...

Marina Makarova is a woman of privilege who aches to break free of the constraints of her genteel life. Swept up on the tides of the Russian Revolution, Marina joins the marches for workers' rights, falls in love with a radical young poet, and betrays everything she holds dear, before being betrayed in turn. As her country goes through tremendous upheaval, Marina's own coming-of-age unfolds, marked by deep passion, devastating loss, and the private...

2019: Andie Figuero has just landed her dream job as a producer of Mansion Makeover, a popular reality show about restoring America's most lavish historic houses. Andie has high hopes for her latest project: the once glorious but gently crumbling Sprague Hall in Newport, Rhode Island, summer resort of America's gilded class-famous for the lavish "summer cottages" of Vanderbilts and Belmonts. But Andie runs into trouble: the reclusive heiress who still...