1867, Richmond, Virginia: Though she wears the same low-cut purple gown that is the uniform of all the girls who work at Worsham's gambling parlor, Arabella stands apart. It's not merely her statuesque beauty and practiced charm. Even at seventeen, Arabella possesses an unyielding grit, and a resolve to escape her background of struggle and poverty. Collis Huntington, railroad baron and self-made multimillionaire, is drawn to Arabella from their first meeting. Collis is married and 30 years her senior, yet they are well-matched in temperament, and flirtation rapidly escalates into an affair.

Madeleine Talmage Force is just 17 when she attracts the attention of John Jacob "Jack" Astor. Jack's mother was the Mrs. Astor, American royalty and New York's most formidable socialite. Despite their 29-year age difference and the scandal of Jack's recent divorce, Madeleine falls headlong into love. On their honeymoon in Egypt, the newlyweds finally find a measure of peace away from photographers and journalists. Madeleine feels truly alive for the first time - and is happily pregnant. The couple plans to return home in the spring of 1912, aboard an opulent new ocean liner.

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 lives in the mansion, Lucia “Lucky” Sprague, will only allow the show to go forward on two conditions.

When Eliza Chapman, a London ladies maid, learns that her real father is one of the richest men in New York City, her whole world changes. He has sent a one-way ticket for her to join him, his mother and his two daughters at his palatial Manhattan mansion. Eliza suddenly has her own ladies maid and learns that she is expected to find a husband. As the social season gets underway, she is swept into a whirl of teas, luncheons, balls and other events. But her sisters see her as unwelcome competition, which makes her feel even more like a fish out of water.

How did the Wendels, one of New York’s most famous Gilded Age families, disappear from history? The Wendels built a fortune from New York real estate, and rubbed shoulders with the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Stuyvesants. But as the 19th century came to an end, the Wendel family tore itself apart. Following six years of painstaking archival research, Claire Prentice has prised open the door of the Wendels’ Fifth Avenue mansion—dubbed “the house of mystery” by the press—to reveal a fascinating and dysfunctional family imprisoned in a gilded cage.

This is the intimate story of 20 tsars and tsarinas, some touched by genius, some by madness, but all inspired by holy autocracy and imperial ambition. Simon Sebag Montefiore's gripping chronicle reveals their secret world of unlimited power and ruthless empire building, overshadowed by palace conspiracy, family rivalries, sexual decadence, and wild extravagance, with a global cast of adventurers, courtesans, revolutionaries, and poets, from Ivan the Terrible to Tolstoy and Pushkin.

As the French revolution ravages the country, Desiree Clary is faced with the life-altering truth that the world she has known and loved is gone, and it’s fallen on her to save her family from the guillotine. A chance encounter with Napoleon Bonaparte, the ambitious and charismatic young military prodigy, provides her answer. When her beloved sister, Julie, marries his brother, Joseph, Desiree and Napoleon’s futures become irrevocably linked.

Written by descendant Arthur T. Vanderbilt II, Fortune's Children traces the dramatic and amazingly colorful history of this great American family, from the rise of industrialist and philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt to the fall of his progeny - wild spendthrifts whose profligacy bankrupted a vast inheritance.

Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone, but she has hosted them all. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie was inspired by a few simple rules: always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard—even when deemed American royalty, even while covered in imperial diamonds.

Lucy Duff Gordon knows she is talented. She sees color, light, and texture in ways few people can begin to imagine. But is the male dominated world of haute couture, who would use her art for their own gain, ready for her? When she is deserted by her wealthy husband, Lucy is left penniless with an aging mother and her five-year-old daughter to support. Desperate to survive, Lucy turns to her one true talent to make a living. A

An epic saga from New York Times best-selling author Stephanie Dray based on the true story of an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and the remarkable women bound by its legacy.

It’s 1938, and a young woman selling face cream out of a New York City beauty parlor is determined to prove she can have it all. Her name is Estée Lauder, and she’s about to take the world by storm, in this dazzling new novel from the USA Today bestselling author of The Social Graces and Park Avenue Summer.

Poisoner, despot, necromancer - the dark legend of Catherine de Medici is centuries old. In this critically hailed biography, Leonie Frieda reclaims the story of this unjustly maligned queen to reveal a skilled ruler battling extraordinary political and personal odds - from a troubled childhood in Florence to her marriage to Henry, son of King Francis I of France; from her transformation of French culture to her fight to protect her throne and her sons' birthright. Based on thousands of private letters, it is a remarkable account of one of the most influential women to wear a crown.

Helen Wilcox has one desire: to successfully launch her daughters into society. From the upper crust herself, Helen's unconventional--if happy--marriage has made the girls' social position precarious. Then her husband gambles the family fortunes on an elevated railroad that he claims will transform the face of the city and the way the people of New York live, but will it ruin the Wilcoxes first? As daughters Jemima and Alice navigate the rise and fall of their family--each is forced to re-examine who she is, and even who she is meant to love.

The child of a married Japanese aristocrat and her African American GI lover, Nori is an outsider from birth. Her grandparents take her in, only to conceal her, fearful of a stain on the royal pedigree that they are desperate to uphold in a changing Japan. Obedient to a fault, Nori accepts her solitary life, despite her natural intellect and curiosity.

In 1942, Evie Farrow is used to life on Ocracoke Island, where every day is the same—until the German U-boats haunting their waters begin to wreak havoc. And when special agent Sterling Bertrand is washed ashore at Evie's inn, her life is turned upside down. While Sterling's injuries keep him inn-bound for weeks, making him even more anxious about the man he's tracking, he becomes increasingly intrigued by Evie, who seems to be hiding secrets of her own.

Born into poverty, brutalised and ignored by her family, it is only when she is married off to a nobleman that her life undergoes a transformation, as her husband recognises in Rosamund a magic she does not know she possesses but which affects almost all who encounter her. Presiding over a luxurious chocolate house where men go to be seen, exchange news and indulge in the sweet and heady drink to which they have become addicted, Rosamund feels blessed. But disaster strikes, and Rosamund stands on the brink of losing all she has worked so hard to achieve.

An epic saga from New York Times best-selling author Stephanie Dray based on the true story of an extraordinary castle in the heart of France and the remarkable women bound by its legacy.

Tabby has a peculiar gift: She can communicate with the recently departed. It makes her special, but it also makes her dangerous. As an orphaned child, she fled with her sister, Alice, from their charlatan aunt Bellefonte, who wanted only to exploit Tabby's gift so she could profit from the recent craze for seances. Now a young woman and tragically separated from Alice, Tabby works with her adopted father, Eli, the kind caretaker of a large Boston cemetery.

The glimmering Huguenot cross she so innocently wears leads her deep into the shadows. When Gabriella Madison arrives in the French village of Castelnau in 1961 to continue her university studies, she doesn’t anticipate being drawn into the secretive world behind the Algerian war for independence from France. And the further she delves into the war efforts, the more her faith is challenged. The people who surround her bring a whirlwind of transforming forces.

Emma Malcolm’s father is staunchly loyal to the crown, but Emma’s heart belongs to Noah Winslow, a lowly printer’s assistant and patriot. But her father has promised her hand to Samuel Clarke, a rapacious and sadistic man. As his fiancée, she would have to give up Noah and the friends who have become like family to her - as well as the beliefs she has come to embrace. After Emma is drawn into the treasonous Boston Tea Party, Samuel blackmails her with evidence that condemns each participant, including Noah. Emma realizes she must do whatever it takes to protect those she loves.

First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.

Mistletoe is beautiful and dangerous, much like the woman from Lord Frederick’s Percy’s past, so when he turns over a new leaf and arranges to marry for his estate, instead of his heart, he never expects the wrong bride to be the right choice. Gracelynn Ferguson never expected to take her elder sister’s place as a Christmas bride, but when she’s thrust into the choice, she will trust in her faithful novels and overactive imagination to help her not only win Frederick’s heart but also to solve the murder mystery of Havensbrook Hall.

Lady Jane Everard cannot abide the new earl of Hadley. The unmannered Scot is a menace to genteel ladies everywhere, what with his booming laugh and swishing kilt and endless supply of “ochs” and “ayes”. Jane wishes Lord Hadley would behave as an earl should and adhere to English rules of polite conduct.

A masterful debut novel by Plimpton Prize winner Isabella Hammad, The Parisian illuminates a pivotal period of Palestinian history through the journey and romances of one young man, from his studies in France during World War I to his return to Palestine at the dawn of its battle for independence.

In the aftermath of WWI, Grace Abernathy is determined to reunite with her family, crossing an ocean to convince her widowed sister to return home to England. But Toronto holds more tragedy and her nephew, Christian, is now in the custody of his paternal relatives, the formidable Easton family, who rejected Grace's sister because of her low social status. Unconvinced that the Eastons can be fitting caretakers, Grace jumps at the chance to become Christian's nanny and to observe the family up close. But she is shocked to discover herself falling for Andrew Easton, the boy's guardian.

Andalin is accustomed to her father’s frequent travels - and to being left behind. So when he returns home and instructs her to pack her belongings, she is bewildered - but there is no time for questions as she is whisked away on a mysterious journey under the cover of night. When their tense flight leads them into the forbidding Black Forest, the pair quickly finds themselves in great peril. With little hope of escape, father and daughter are spared when rescue appears in the form of the mysterious Dark Rider, a notorious deadly highwayman feared by all he meets.

Champagne, 1939. Gabrielle Leblanc Dupree is taking her family's future into her hands. While she should be preparing for a lavish party to celebrate two centuries of champagne making, she secretly hides Chateau Fouché-Leblanc's most precious vintages behind a fake wall in the cellar in preparation for the looming war. But when she joins the resistance, the coveted champagne isn't the most dangerous secret her cellar must conceal.

Sixteen-year-old Lorena Leland’s dreams of a rich and fulfilling life as a writer are dashed when the stock market crashes in 1929. Seven years into the Great Depression, Rena’s banker father has retreated into the bottle, her sister is married to a lazy charlatan and gambler, and Rena is an unemployed newspaper reporter. Eager for any writing job, Rena accepts a position interviewing former slaves for the Federal Writers’ Project. There, she meets Frankie Washington, a 101-year-old woman whose honest yet tragic past captivates Rena.

When concert pianist Vivienne Mourdant’s father dies, he leaves to her the care of a patient at Hurstwell Asylum. Vivienne had no idea the woman existed, and yet her portrait is shockingly familiar. When the asylum claims she was never a patient there, Vivienne is compelled to discover what happened to the figure she remembers from childhood dreams.