The Whittiers

Graduating magna cum laude from MIT is the happiest day of Billie Banks’s life, although her family is not part of it. Her mother, who always supported her, died when Billie was seventeen. Since then, her father has been slowly drinking himself to death on the family farm in Iowa, and she and her younger sister, Mickie, have grown even more estranged.

Following the unexpected death of her beloved husband, art gallery owner Samantha Thompson finds herself adrift in their Malibu beach house. Her three adult children—scattered from New York to London to Milan—are concerned for her well-being and encourage her to take a trip to Paris. Once abroad, an impulsive day trip from Paris to Biarritz leads Samantha to discover the charming medieval village of Arcangues in the Basque countryside, with its unique and iconic blue shutters and historic château.

Meredith White was one of Hollywood's most recognizable faces. But a personal tragedy cut her acting career short and alienated her from her family. For the last 15 years, Meredith has been living alone in San Francisco with two trusted caretakers. Then a massive earthquake strikes Northern California. Meredith invites her stunned and shaken neighbors into her mostly undamaged home as the recovery begins. These people did not even realize that a movie star was living on their street. Now, they are sharing her mansion, as well as their most closely kept secrets.

With wit and intelligence, Danielle Steel explores love in all its guises, taking us into the lives of three unusual but wonderfully real couples. One Day at a Time is at once moving, thought provoking, and utterly impossible to put down.

Bill is a dedicated young lawyer working at his family’s prestigious New York firm, who leaves everything he trained for to follow his dream and become a minister in rural Wyoming. Jenny, his wife, is a stylist whose heart and soul are invested in fashion. She leaves the milieu and life she loves to join him. The certainty they share is that their destinies are linked forever.

Antonia Adams is the product of a loveless marriage between an aspiring actress and an aristocrat from a once distinguished family. As a child, she is abandoned in the abyss that yawns between them, blamed by her mother, ignored by her father, and neglected by both. Unprotected and unloved, she learns that the only way to feel safe is to hide from the dangers around her, drawing as little attention as possible to herself, to be “invisible.”

Faith Ferguson is New York's most in-demand wedding planner, an arbiter of taste for elegant affairs, lavish ceremonies, and exclusive fêtes. She appreciates a simple celebration as much as a dazzling event, for she knows that a dream wedding is not necessarily the most expensive one. As much as Faith enjoys her work, her two failed engagements leave her with no desire to get married herself. She finds fulfillment in her close relationship with her twin sister, Hope, her role as a mentor for her assistant, Violet, and her career.

Every woman makes choices. And no one has made more difficult choices than Olivia Grayson. The enormously successful businesswoman missed out on much of her children’s lives while she built her legendary home-furnishings empire. In Danielle Steel’s character-rich novel, Olivia faces the past, tries to balance the present and make amends where due, while still running her vastly successful business. As a way of making up to them for time lost, Olivia spends months each year planning a holiday that everyone in her family will enjoy.

Joachim von Hartmann was born and raised in Buenos Aires by his loving German mother, inseparable from his identical twin. When Joachim moves to Paris with his mother in his late teens, his twin stays behind and enters a dark world. Meanwhile, Joachim begins training to be a butler, fascinated by the precision and intense demands, and goes on to work in some of the grandest homes in England. Olivia White has given 10 years of her life to her magazine. A bequest from her mother allows her a year in Paris to reinvent herself. It is then that her path and Joachim's cross.

Deeply in love, Christophe and Joy Lammenais built Chateau Lammenais into a small but renowned Napa Valley winery and an idyllic home where they raised their beloved daughter, Camille, who takes on increasing responsibilities for the estate they all treasure. But after Joy's early death from breast cancer, a lonely Christophe soon falls prey to the machinations of a sophisticate from his native France - who moves, with her two reprobate sons, to consolidate her power over Camille and the property when Christophe is killed in a plane crash.

Four young women's lives intersect in the apartment they've shared in Hell's Kitchen: Claire, a shoe designer; Abby, an aspiring novelist; Morgan, a successful financial consultant; and Sasha, a resident in obstetrics. As different as they are from one another, the women had become a family by choice. But while their lives had proceeded smoothly in the years they'd lived together, new relationships, job opportunities, and surprising circumstances will test the strength of their bond in and outside the loft that had become their home.

Kezia Cooper Hobson, recently widowed, arrives in New York from San Francisco. Determined to make a fresh start, she has just completed the sale of her Pacific Heights home, not to mention her husband's venture capital firm, and in doing so, is also freed from her responsibility as a board member of the company. Bringing with her only a few personal treasures, she is excited to move into the blank slate of a beautiful midtown penthouse, in the city that she has always loved. It is also where her two adult daughters now live.

With a wife he loves and an exciting London-based career, architect Charles Waterston's life seems in perfect balance. Nothing prepares him for the sudden end to his ten-year marriage-or his unwanted transfer to his firm's New York office. Christmas is approaching when Charlie leaves New York...

After working as head designer for Oscar de la Renta, Eugenia Ward started her own company when she turned forty, fourteen years ago. She is now a major name in evening gowns and wedding gowns, ready-to-wear and haute couture. But with the fashion business in major downturn, she has recently suffered heavy losses, and Eugenia desperately needs new investors—and new ideas.

Alexandra Bouvier is born in Paris in 1900, at the dawn of a new century. From an early age, she is encouraged to think for herself by her enlightened family: her father, a French doctor; her mother, an American nurse; and her maternal grandfather a highly regarded newspaperman back in the Midwest. At age fourteen, Alex's comfortable life is upended as war erupts across Europe. Her parents follow their sense of duty to the front, performing triage at a field hospital and confronting the horrors of poison gas and trench warfare.