Diane Johnson

"From the New York Times bestselling author of Le Divorce, a dazzling meditation on the mysteries of the "wispy but material" family ghosts who shape us. Growing up in the small river town of Moline, Illinois, Diane Johnson always dreamed of floating down the Mississippi and off to see the world. Years later, at home in France, a French friend teases her: 'Indifference to history--that's why you Americans seem so naive and don't really know where...

"Published one year after its author's death in 1818, "Persuasion is Jane Austen's last completed novel. On its most basic level, the book is a love story. On another level, it is a deft exploration of human foibles and social flux. Twenty-seven-year-old Anne Elliot is Austen's most adult heroine. Eight years before the story proper begins, she is happily betrothed to a navel officer, Frederick Wentworth, but she precipitously breaks off the engagement...

An elderly sister and brother and their two boarders experience a few unusual days that prove crucial in their lives.

When Isabel Walker receives word that her pregnant stepsister Roxy has been left by her philandering French husband, artist Charles-Henri de Persand, Isabel travels to Paris to offer her help and moral support. Together, the two young women hit the party scene, living it up with the locals and American expatriates. Eventually, Isabel unexpectedly begins an affair with a septuagenarian Frenchman.