Richard Lieberman

Catherine Oliphant writes for women's magazines and lives comfortably with anthropologist Tom Mallow - although she's starting to wonder if they'll ever get married. Then Tom drops his bombshell: He's leaving her for a 19-year-old student. Though stunned by Tom's betrayal, Catherine quickly becomes fascinated by another anthropologist, Alaric Lydgate, a reclusive eccentric recently returned from Africa. As Catherine starts to weigh her options, she must figure out who she is and what she really wants.

William Somerset Maugham's remarkable first novel was such an instant success that the 23-year-old medical student left school to become a full-time author. Liza, a vibrant but poverty-stricken London girl, is the most graceful and daring dancer that anyone has ever seen, wildly moving to the music of the Italian organ player on Old Kent Road. But her bright light begins to dim as the tragic effects of illness and poverty overtake her body, if not her spirit.

Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.

Robert K. Massie returns with another masterpiece of narrative biography, the extraordinary story of an obscure German princess who became Catherine the Great. Born into a minor noble family, Catherine transformed herself into empress of Russia by sheer determination. For thirty-four years, the government, foreign policy, cultural development, and welfare of the Russian people were in her hands.