Even for a series launch, too much is left dangling.
The first volume of Williams’ planned series introduces two women who occupy the same Greenwich Village apartment seven decades apart.
In a 1998 frame for the main Roaring ’20s story, Ella, a forensic accountant by trade, has just left her investment-banker husband after catching him with a prostitute. She moves into a studio apartment, 4D, at 11 Christopher St. One of her first encounters, in the basement laundry room, is with Hector, who shares her interests and her talent for music. In the same laundry room, late at night, Ella hears jazz riffs seeping through the wall—odd, because the adjacent building is unoccupied. Cut to 1924, when Ginger Kelly, a typist who fled her Appalachian village for New York after her stepfather sexually assaulted her, occupies the same building, in that era a boardinghouse, and the same flat. Ginger frequents the neighboring cellar speak-easy (which features a jazz band) and, after being swept up in a raid, meets handsome Prohibition agent Oliver Anson. Returning briefly for her mother’s funeral, Ginger observes that her stepfather, Duke Kelly, once a feckless barfly, has transformed his own fortunes and those of Ginger’s hardscrabble hometown, River Junction, Maryland, with his bootlegging operations. The G-men are hot on Duke’s trail, and Ginger is enlisted to act as a double agent, delivering packages for Duke and reporting to Anson. Will Anson prove to be as upstanding as he seems, and as hunkish? Very intermittently we return to Ella, who, after rebuffing her husband’s apologies and getting in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commision, is revealed to be a Schuyler, that clan of Manhattan blue bloods that has anchored so many Williams novels. The parallels between the two heroines are underdeveloped, and Ginger’s story is stalled by excessive verbiage designed, apparently, to showcase the author’s fluency in Runyon-speak.
Even for a series launch, too much is left dangling.Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-240502-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
A smooth blend of suspense and romance. As ever, the author's trademark effortless style keeps a complex plot moving without...
Megaselling Roberts (River's End, 1999, etc.) goes to Napa Valley for the tale of an Italian-American family wine producers rocked by scandal and a series of murders.
Dynasty head Tereza Giambelli knows that her granddaughter Sophia is the only family member capable of running a multimillion-dollar wine business—and no one contradicts La Signora. It's just as well the lovely young woman is still single: Tereza has plans for her. The matriarch has recently married Eli MacMillan, the American founder of another famous wine company. Eli's grandson Tyler knows everything there is to know about producing wine, from the vineyard to the vat. Ruggedly handsome, intelligent and earthy, he's a perfect match for public-relations whiz Sophia—or so thinks Tereza. The two young people begin to work together; Tyler teaches Sophia the fine art of making wine and making love. But other family members hope to claim their share of the Giambelli fortune, and people start dying mysteriously, including Sophia's good-for-nothing father, Tony Avano. Long divorced from long-suffering Pilar Giambelli, Tony led an opulent, self-indulgent life that provides plenty of murder suspects. He might have been killed by the mob, or a jealous mistress, or his spoiled brother-in-law, Tereza's lazy son, who's produced a passel of brats with his foolish Italian wife in the hopes of making Tereza happy. Everyone has a motive, and nothing is what it seems, Sophia discovers, but Tyler stands by her. Then a bottle of tainted merlot kills a company exec. A tragic mishap caused by poisonous plants growing near the vines? Or deliberate product tampering intended to destroy the company? Sophia and Tyler will need to delve even deeper into the convoluted and sometimes unsavory history of the family and its three-generation business.
A smooth blend of suspense and romance. As ever, the author's trademark effortless style keeps a complex plot moving without a hitch.Pub Date: March 19, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14712-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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