Flappers & Fiction

What can a pair of boots tell you about jealousy? More than any face, if this story is to be believed. When an artist’s antique foot-stove conjures a vision of colonial life, he follows his own Continental boots into frozen lanes, a candlelit church, and finally a moonlit clearing where swords cross in mid-air. The rivals are known only by their footwear, yet every shuffle, kick, and defiant heel-grind speaks volumes.

Jack Hunter intended to study the constellations when he purchased that brass telescope, but he soon found a far more captivating star in the window across the way. Of course, watching from afar is hardly a courtship. When she suddenly vanishes, Jack’s pursuit leads him to a breezy seaside hotel where a jealous rival waits in the wings. Now, a cruel trap on a deserted island threatens to ruin a young woman’s reputation forever, and Jack must race against the setting sun to prevent a scandal that no apology could ever fix.

Manuela is the toast of the capital, a beauty trapped in a wealthy but loveless marriage where she treats her own child with icy indifference. While her little Ella yearns for a single kiss, Manuela dreams only of running away with her dashing cousin, Victor. But on the night she intends to vanish forever, a terrifying silence falls over the nursery. When her daughter is faced with a sudden, deadly fever, the young mother must finally decide if her heart belongs to the phantom of a past romance or the fragile life trembling in her arms.

High upon a rocky New England hill, nineteen-year-old Lillie Kittridge whispered a foolish wish to meet a wicked man. Moments later, a rattlesnake struck, and a handsome stranger appeared to save her. Keith Rantoul seems like the perfect hero for a girl bored by her parents’ naive silver honeymoon. But while the Reverend and his wife see only romance, their old friend Judge Horne detects a different kind of danger. As Lillie prepares to forsake everything for love, she finds that the most venomous serpents often hide in plain sight.

Montségur never intended to be a statesman, yet he finds himself a deputy with a rather unique compass for his convictions. You see, his political ideology doesn’t come from the newspapers, but from the lady currently holding his heart. From the Right Center with a demanding actress to the Republican Left under the spell of the ambitious Madame Lambertin, his vote simply follows his affections. But when a pair of fine eyes in the countryside demands yet another shift, one has to ask: does France’s legislative future rest entirely on a lover’s whim?

A diamond ring vanishes on the same morning it should have been given back. Patty Graham, freshly engaged and already embroiled in a furious quarrel with Dr. Wentworth over the tiny, scarlet-throated humming birds adorning her new bonnet, has lost the one object that could make her grand gesture of rejection possible. What follows is an afternoon of tangled rose bushes, an unwelcome proposal from the neighbor, and a funeral bouquet carrying something far worse than grief.