by Susan Isaacs
Members of the staffs of the following institutions were very helpful: The Cincinnati Historical Society, the Cincinnati Public Library, the New York Public Library, and, especially, the Port Washington (New York) Public Library.
My friends Consuelo Baehr, Mary Rooney, Hilma Wolitzer, and Susan Zises encouraged me and gave me valuable criticism and lots of attention.
Gloria Safier, my agent, and Larry Ashmead, my editor, were—as usual—wise, patient, and completely wonderful.
And Elkan Abramowitz is still the best person in the world.
About the Author
Susan Isaacs is the author of eight novels including Red, White & Blue, Lily White, After All These Years, Compromising Positions, and Shining Through and one non-fiction title Brave Dames And Wimpettes: What Women Are Really Doing on Page and Screen. She lives on Long Island with her husband.
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Praise for Susan Isaacs
Almost Paradise
“A multi-generational family saga that’s different…it’s not merely interesting, it’s literate as well. Isaacs has fleshed out her characters with great skill, and has a fine eye for period detail.”
Miami Herald
“Every detail is correct: the dialogue, the settings, the characterizations…. In Susan Isaacs’s hands the story practically jumps off the page into real life.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“A good read…. The serious novel—featuring realized characters caught in a real-life dilemma—is hitched up with the multi-generational saga—long, sexy, historically spiced…. Isaacs can tell a story.”
Houston Post
“A twentieth-century fairy tale…. Colorful…. A sprawling three-generational family saga with a distinctive American touch…. readable and diverting.”
Publishers Weekly
Shining Through
“A working girl saga, spy novel, love story….
Very perceptive and very funny.”
Washington Post Book World
“Sizzling…. Shining Through explodes more than one myth about being as American as apple pie.”
Los Angeles Times
“Susan Isaacs rates cheers…. As close to a 1940s movie as a book can get. It’s like the kind of big, exciting movie we liked best then, in which someone pretty much like us takes incredible risks for unimpeachable motives and wins just what we wanted.”
New York Times Book Review
“Susan Isaacs can sure kick-start a novel…. A witty, literate soap opera with some derring-do…a feisty heroine, a reluctant lover, the girl you love to hate, and an intriguing older man playing out their personal dramas as the world goes to war.”
New York Daily News
“Laced with heartbreak, drama, and thrills…marvelously readable…. Shining Through is a dandy book, with a smile, a tug at the heartstrings and an insight on every page.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Totally captivating…. A down-to-earth Cinderella story that is a totally captivating and unexpected blend of action, adventure, romantic fiction and spy thriller…. Keeps readers hooked from first page to last…. The wonderfully wrought characterization of Linda Voss shines throughout this novel. Isaacs has hit her stride.”
Chicago Sun-Times
“Extravagant…. As witty as she ever was, but her imagination has gotten wilder, and the story she tells is bigger.”
Cosmopolitan
“I can’t think when I liked a fictional character as much as I liked Linda Voss…. A feel-good novel. Susan Isaacs has created people who are comprehensible and likable…. A well-written, entertaining story about a nice woman. She’ll come shining through for you.”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Red, White and Blue
“Isaacs delivers.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“A passionate page-turner…. Should earn the allegiance of her countless devoted fans.”
Entertainment Weekly
“Isaacs excels at keeping the reader entertained.”
Seattle Times
“Superior entertainment…. A funny, suspenseful, true-to-life novel…. Who the heck is our best popular novelist? The nominee from this quarter is Susan Isaacs…. Isaacs is a comic realist, an astute chronicler of contemporary life in the tradition of…Anthony Trollope…. During the course of her career, Isaacs has produced eight novels that, with their humor, suspense, and equal grasp of male and female psychology, are unlike anything else on the bestseller lists.”
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“The jauntiness and frothy exuberance of Susan Isaacs’s style in her eighth novel carries you along as if on a wonderful joy ride. She is superb at quick character sketches, the deadly battles between fathers and sons, family frictions and generational antagonisms. Her effervescence convinces you that everything will turn out all right in the end. Which it does. But just barely.”
Providence Sunday Journal
“Fiction done well, and done with a difference…. A sophisticated storyteller, with a wry view of the world.”
Washington Post
“Filled with humor and well-drawn characters…. It’s a tribute to her ability that you’ll not only care deeply about the subject but also about the characters to whom she entrusts the job.”
San Antonio Express-News
“Is there anyone better than Susan Isaacs at wrapping a romance inside a larger, topical tale?…Most readers will find it hard to resist her scrappy heroine and her exuberant examination of the overlapping roots of an American family tree.”
Glamour
“With keen humor and fine characterizations, the bestselling Isaacs’s multigenerational saga explores the nature of American identity…. An absorbing chronicle of the American character.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Delightful…. Susan Isaacs has…a knack for entertaining her reader with the details of American pop culture…. Isaacs has taken on a formidable project: to write a multigenerational family drama that is also a romantic comedy and a murder mystery and a serious consideration of weighty issues like anti-Semitism and assimilation—all without losing her sense of humor or her eye for the entertaining detour.”
New York Times Book Review
“A perfect winter beach read…. Breezy, inventive, and very satisfying.”
Women In Touch
“Isaacs has the Midas touch with whatever she writes…. A model of what popular entertainment ought to be but rarely is: a medium that provides escape without turning the mind to mush.”
Newsday
Lily White
“A big, fat, happy feast of a book…. [Isaacs’s] most confident and appealing…. [She] is both funny and piercing, a highly satisfying combination.”
New York Times Book Review
“Riveting…. Best of all is the character of Lee, smart and sassy…self-deluded at the same time.
Her good–humored, self-knowing, self-mocking voice is a treat for the ear.”
Boston Globe
“A well-written, moving story that will keep the reader engrossed all the way.”
Miami Herald
“Stunning…. [Isaacs] has created an ingenious novel that breaks out of the mystery genre. In fact, it sets the genre—in which, typically, the killer is brought to justice—on its ear.”
Cincinnati Post
After All These Years
“Entertaining and imaginative…. Isaacs scores again with this relentlessly funny portrait of the rich, old-line and nouveau. The plot rewardingly twists, the characters charm and Rosie carries the day…. A delightful summer cooler.”
People magazine
“You gotta laugh…. Susan Isaacs has always done awfully well in her entertaining fiction, and she’s done it again in After All These Years.”
New York Times Book Review
“Bursts with energy, razor-sharp dialogue and memorable ch
aracters.”
Detroit News
“Fabulous beach reading.”
McCall’s
Magic Hour
“Vintage Isaacs…. Magic Hour is like polishing off an entire box of chocolate-covered chocolates…. Fun.”
New York Times Book Review
“Clever, unexpected, drum-tight…. The plot is streamlined and the time-frame is short and the voice we hear is witty, and coming-at-us real.”
Washington Post Book World
“A wonderfully rich, sensual sort of novel…. The dialogue rips along with panache, with sharp and surprising turns, always funny, always fun.”
Detroit News
“A delightful blend of obsession, comedy, romance, movies and murder.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Elegantly funny and original…. Long after the handcuffs are snapped shut you’re likely to find yourself smiling fondly at the memory of Susan Isaacs’s one-of-a-kind characters.”
Anne Tyler, Vogue
Close Relations
“Jane Austen brought up to date…. Highly amusing.”
Atlantic Monthly
“An entertaining novel by a witty, wry observer of contemporary life.”
New York Times Book Review
“A delightful read.”
Publishers Weekly
By Susan Isaacs
Novels
COMPROMISING POSITIONS
CLOSE RELATIONS
ALMOST PARADISE
SHINING THROUGH
MAGIC HOUR
AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
LILY WHITE
RED, WHITE AND BLUE
Screenplays
HELLO AGAIN
COMPROMISING POSITIONS
Nonfiction
BRAVE DAMES AND WIMPETTES:
WHAT WOMEN ARE REALLY DOING
ON PAGE AND SCREEN
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALMOST PARADISE. Copyright © 1984 by Susan Isaacs. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © MAY 2008 ISBN: 9780061847066
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Book Two
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Book Three
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Author's Note
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Susan Isaacs
Copyright
About the Publisher