When the wealthy St. George girls and their friends are rejected by New York society because their bloodlines are too short, they go to England and make superb marriages, but Nan St. George finds that being a duchess does not necessarily bring happiness.

Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the...

Considered by many to be her masterpiece, Edith Wharton's second full-length work is a scathing yet personal examination of the exploits and follies of the modern upper class. As she unfolds the story of Undine Spragg, from New York to Europe, Wharton affords us a detailed glimpse of what might be called the interior décor of this America and its nouveau riche fringes. Through a heroine who is as vain, spoiled, and selfish as she is irresistibly...

The shy and sweet daughter of a well-to-do physician, Catherine Sloper seems destined for lifelong spinsterhood until the sudden appearance of a dashing suitor who proposes marriage. Her adored father suspects the would-be fiance of fortune-hunting and threatens her with disinheritance, forcing Catherine to choose between lover and father. Setting his novel in New York City of the 1840s, James masterfully explores the moral consequences of a tender...

Working as a typist for the NYC Police Department in 1923, Rose Baker documents confessions of harrowing crimes and struggles with changing gender roles while clinging to her Victorian ideals and searching for nurturing companionship before becoming obsessed with a glamorous newcomer and her world of bobbed hair, smoking and speakeasies.

"Lucy is faced with a life-altering choice. But before she can make her decision, she must start her story--their story--at the very beginning. Lucy and Gabe meet as seniors at Columbia University on a day that changes both of their lives forever. Together, they decide they want their lives to mean something, to matter. When they meet again a year later, it seems fated--perhaps they'll find life's meaning in each other. But then Gabe becomes a photojournalist...

Two best friends living in New York in their early 30s find that their relationship changes when one unexpectedly becomes pregnant.

Winter Santiaga, the daughter of one of Brooklyn's most powerful drug czars, uses her own weapons--including sex and an aggressive attitude--to stay on top, after her father's empire is threatened by a drug war.

A romantic early in life, Clara Hoyt gets engaged -- much to her mother's horror -- to the lackluster Bobbie Lester. Soon after her Vassar graduation, however, Clara sees the error of her ways, spurns Bobbie, and slyly enthralls the well-bred and fabulously wealthy Trevor Hoyt, the first of her husbands. Soon she lands a job at a tony magazine, and so begins her wildly entertaining course to the inner sanctum of New York's aristocracy and into the...