Patti Massman

Susan Rosser

Diana Lowe has everything—marriage to a Beverly Hills dentist, two bright teenage children, a beautiful home in a suburb of Los Angeles, friends who actually like her and a Mercedes-Benz. When her overweight mother suffers a heart attack, Diana’s perfect world turns upside down. Her frustrated husband, Harvey, threatens to leave Diana if she doesn’t solve her own weight problem. Diana adopts a new eating regimen, and when Harvey finds it includes chocolate candy, it’s all he can handle. He follows through on his threat and moves out. Alone for the first time, Diana feels the acute emotional and financial pain of the deserted wife. She doubts herself and loses sight of who she is. And though her well-connected friends are there for her, it’s Alison Rifkind, the wife of Harvey’s professional rival, who champions Diana’s cause and offers a way out. Transforming her life slowly, a wiser, more mature Diana experiences a quixotic, adventure filled romance carrying her to farthest reaches of the globe, and rediscovering love where she least expects it.

Just Desserts

Abandoned by her husband, ignored by her children, and plagued by financial problems, overweight Diana Lowe goes on a diet and writes a revolutionary cookbook that launches a lucrative new career, and rediscovers the joys of sex and of love

The Vietnam War; a war in which the government betrays its people, the military betrays its soldiers, the soldiers betray those they are assigned to protect...and one woman betrays her best friend. A collage of real events, A Matter of Betrayal illustrates the impact of the Vietnam War on two strong-willed women. These women's lives and the lives of all Americans are ripped apart by the turbulent 60's and the Vietnam War, taking 30 years to heal. The daughter of a four star general, Jenny leaves behind her sheltered life for the front lines of a war no one understands. Among the incomprehensible horrors, she discovers love and then great pain as the man she loves becomes a casualty of war. Upon her return to the "world," she is betrayed by her best friend and forced underground to protect her daughter and her own true identity. Music becomes Jenny's tool for survivalthe way back to herself. Kick is also an army brat and Jenny's best friend. She takes another road leading away from the rigid world of her military parents. Without an ounce of Jenny's idealism, she opts to tackle New York. A would-be photographer, she dives into the underground pop art and drug scene, hoping along the way to snag a rich husband who will give her the security and status she longs to possess. Debased and broken by the heir of an industrialist family and driven by jealousy, she betrays her best friend, her husband and herself. Only when the truth comes out, as it does through Jenny's grown daughter as she returns to Vietnam to find her father, can the waters calm and real healing begin.

A Story Based in True Events

A Matter of Betrayal

Pamela Beck

As Kelly Nelson approaches her thirty-second birthday, she is consumed by the fantasy of making love to a man other than her predictable, dependable husband of fourteen years-the only man she has ever been to bed with. At her gym, she confesses her obsession to her friends, Ericka and Kristen, who then devise the perfect birthday gift for her: one evening of extramarital romance with a man Kelly has admitted her attraction for-Brandon Michaels, a successful architect who at 40 is single by choice and very sexy. With Brandon, Kelly discovers the passion that has been missing from her marriage, and the fling that was supposed to have been a one-night adventure suddenly takes on a deeper meaning. The effects of Kelly's affair in the marriages of all three women involved, is what this fast-paced novel is about. The book captures every nuance of the ambivalent feeling that holds a woman in limbo somewhere between wanting more sexual freedom and needing the security of marriage.

Patti Massman

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