"Lovely and quietly intelligent, French chambermaid Hélène ... comes upon a couple ... engaged in an intensely sensual chess match and discovers she has a knack for the game. This obsession, much to the chagrin of her husband and teenage daughter, leads her to seek the clandestine tutelage of a reclusive American doctor ... a liaison that radically transforms both of their lackluster lives"--Container.

Years after being abandoned at an orphanage by her father, Gabrielle Chanel finds a job in a tailor shop where she meets, and soon begins an affair with French millionaire Etienne Balsan. Through Baron Balsan she is introduced into French society and given the opportunity to design her own style of hats. Though her career takes off, her personal life becomes more complicated when she falls in love with Balsan's former best friend Arthur Capel.

During the Spanish Civil War, young Carlos is abandoned at a completely isolated orphanage. The tensions therein have been building for years, exacerbated by the unexploded bomb resting menacingly in the courtyard. Bullies scheme, tempers flare, and a ghost that visits Carlos's bed seems to be the key to it all.

When a gifted ghostwriter is hired to write the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang, he quickly finds himself trapped in a web of political and sexual intrigue. Lang is implicated in a scandal over his administration's harsh tactics, and as the ghostwriter digs into the politician's past, he discovers secrets that threaten to jeopardize international relations forever.

Marilyn Vine's idyllic life in Connecticut is devastated by the tragic death of her only son, Dale, during his 15th birthday party. 3,000 miles away, Ria Lynch's marriage comes to a stunningly abrupt end in Dublin, Ireland, when husband Danny reveals that he is leaving her for his pregnant mistress, Bernadette. An accidental phone call brings these two otherwise unrelated women together and, in their mutual need for space and time alone, they agree...