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From Simon and Schuster:






The Finishing Touches
Hester Browne

A fading English finishing school gets a twenty-first-century makeover in this "modern-day fairy tale" (Romantic Times) from New York Times bestselling author Hester Browne, whose sparkling novels are "charming and feel-good" (Cosmopolitan).Twenty-seven years ago, an infant turned up on the doorstep of London’s esteemed Phillimore Academy for Young Ladies. Now, Betsy Phillimore returns to the place where she was lovingly raised by Lord and Lady Phillimore, only to find the Academy in disrepair and Lord P. desperate to save his legacy. Enter Betsy with a savvy business plan to replace dusty protocol with the essentials girls need today: cell phone etiquette, eating sushi properly, handling credit cards, choosing the perfect little black dress, negotiating a pre-nup, and other lessons in independent living. But returning to London also means crossing paths with her sexy girlhood crush . . . and stirring up the mystery of who her parents are and why they abandoned her. Will the puzzle pieces of her past fall into place while Betsy races to save the only home she’s ever known?



The Shadow Princess
Indu Sundaresan

Sundaresan (The Twentieth Wife) returns to 17th-century India in this romantic fictionalization of the life of Jahanara, the oldest child of the empress Mumtaz Mahal, Shah Jahan's cherished wife. Mumtaz dies in childbirth, leaving four sons, two teenage daughters and a newborn girl. The grief-stricken emperor seeks consolation in the construction of the Taj, the magnificent Luminous Tomb, while the profundity of his mourning exposes his fallibility to his sons, who begin eyeing his throne. Jahanara and her sister Roshanara choose to back different brothers, and they compete to rule in both the royal harem and their father's heart. Before long, Jahanara is the one who succeeds as the emperor's closest confidante, and he refuses to allow her to leave him to marry. Sundaresan has a scholar's fascination with the period; she's at her best describing the opulent court or the construction of the Taj Mahal. Little is known about the actual Jahanara, and Sundaresan has blessed the princess's fictional proxy with such perfection that readers will be tempted to find her flawed siblings not only more believable but also more interesting.



The Blue Orchard
Jackson Taylor

In what could be a modern classic, poet and fiction writer Taylor takes an unblinking look at abortion in America many decades before Roe v. Wade. Introducing Verna Crone as she's arrested in her home in 1954, Taylor then transports readers to her poor Pennsylvania beginnings, yanked out of school as a teenager to help support her family. Raped by her first employer, Verna soon undergoes an abortion, illegally administered by a country midwife. After another pregnancy leaves her with a son, Verna enlists her mom's help and returns to the city to become a nurse; before long, Verna begins working for Dr. Crampton, a well-to-do African-American doctor who performs illegal abortions. Conflicted at first, Verna quickly grows accustomed to the money and finds herself less upset with every procedure; it's only after Crampton runs afoul of some state politicos that the two are arrested. In this powerful, vivid debut novel, Taylor parses issues of race, power, and religion in unflinching terms while believably inhabiting the mind of a conflicted woman.