Intelligent, crisp, ironic, and well-paced, This Side of Married brings to mind a pleasing cross of Jane Austen and Laurie Colwin. It is a sparkling domestic novel of romantic love and familial loyalties that is as heady as a glass of good champagne and as deliciously pleasurable as an authentic Sacher torte. This Side of Married introduces the Rubin girls—three eligible sisters in an affluent family in a comfortable Philadelphia suburb, dominated by a strong-willed matriarch whose defining wish is to see each of them well-married. One daughter, Isabel, already is, although less than happily; a second, Alice, is about to tumble head over heels into a speedy engagement; the third and youngest, Tina, is blithely and resolutely single, though always dreaming of the perfect wedding to come. As various men enter from the wings, the daughters' lives are thrown into unexpected upheaval—from Theo, Isabel's lawyer husband, who is hardly the...

In 1920 an aspiring geneticist escapes into her studies as she grapples with her sexuality, but the world of science comes with its own troubles. In 1920, having persuaded her resistant mother to send her to college, Kate Croft falls in love with science. Painfully rebuffed by a girl she longs for, and in flight from her own confusing sexuality, Kate finds refuge in the calm rationality of biology: its vision of a deeply interconnected world, and the promise that the new field of genetics can explain the way people are. But science, too, turns out to be marred by human weakness. Despite her hard work and extraordinary gifts, Kate struggles, facing discrimination, competition, and scientific theft. At the same time, a love affair is threatened by Kate's obsession with figuring out the meaning of the puzzling changes she sees in her experiments. In the Field explores what it takes to triumph in the ruthless world of...

Jane Levitsky is a bright light in the field of nineteenth-century Russian literature, making her name as an expert on the novels of Grigory Karkov and the diaries of his wife, the long-suffering Masha Karkova. Jane is also wife to sweet, reasonable Billy and mother to lovable (if demanding) Maisie, roles she's finding surprisingly challenging to juggle along with her ambitions. But when Jane uncovers evidence that Masha may have been more than muse and helpmeet to her famous husband, she seizes her ticket to academic superstardom. Little does she know that she has set in motion a chain of events that will come perilously close to unraveling both her marriage and her career. Lady of the Snakes will be instantly familiar—and instantly unforgettable—to anyone who has ever felt torn between two worlds.