In 1927 Philadelphia, to save her family's financial future and social standing, Helen Montgomery marries the black-sheep scion of a railroad magnate, but as her husband's attempts to be published lead to frustration and her personal dreams recede, the cracks in the perfect life she desires start to show.

"Love in late capitalism: Ivana Sajko takes us to the frontlines of a war waged between kitchen and bedroom. He, an unemployed Dante scholar, trying to change the world and write a novel. She, once a passable actress with a vaguely rewarding theater job,now a stay-at-home mom. He is delirious with dreams of grandeur; she is on edge, a detonator bomb with a dirty laundry trigger. The rent is late, the neighbor caviling, the government astoundingly...

"New to wealth and to London high society, American heiress Cora Dove discovers that with the right man, marriage might not be such an inconvenience after all. . . . Cora Dove and her sisters' questionable legitimacy has been the lifelong subject of New York's gossipmongers and a continual stain on their father's reputation. So when the girls each receive a generous, guilt-induced dowry from their dying grandmother, the sly Mr. Hathaway vows to release...