Based on a real-life scandal that gripped Britain in the 1860s, this domestic thriller – explores a feminist spinster’s reluctant involvement in a sordid divorce. Joint winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Orange Prize, a Now Magazine Top Ten Book of the Year. Reached No. 7 in paperback fiction sales in the UK and No. 1 in Ireland.

The Sealed Letter is a delicious tale of secrets, betrayal, and forbidden love.

Helen Codrington is unhappily married. Emily 'Fido' Faithfull hasn't seen her once-dear friend for years. Suddenly, after bumping into Helen on the streets of Victorian London, Fido finds herself reluctantly helping Helen to have an affair with a young army officer.

The women's friendship quickly unravels amid courtroom accusations of adultery, counter-accusations of cruelty and attempted rape, and the appearance of a mysterious 'sealed letter' that could destroy more than one life . . .

Ex-library book in like new condition with the exception of library stickers on the front and spine as well as a library stamp on the 4th page.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Maryland

The Sealed Letter

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

New York

The Doctors Wife

New Jersey

A Novel

Belle Cantrell goes to jail in 1920s Louisiana after swimming in her bloomers with a group of suffragettes, killing her husband of sixteen years, and engaging in other tumultuous activities that transform her home community.

The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell

c21d3565-1834-493c-8b26-1b24cd018d37-1

Julie Metz's life changes forever on one ordinary January afternoon when her husband, Henry, collapses on the kitchen floor and dies in her arms. Suddenly, this mother of a six-year-old is the young widow in a bucolic small town. And this is only the beginning. Seven months after Henry's death, just when Julie thinks she is emerging from the worst of it, comes the rest of it: She discovers that what had appeared to be the reality of her marriage was but a half-truth. Henry had hidden another life from her.

"He loved you so much." That's what everyone keeps telling her. It's true that he loved Julie and their six-year-old daughter ebulliently and devotedly, but as she starts to pick up the pieces and rebuild her life without Henry in it, she learns that Henry had been unfaithful throughout their twelve years of marriage. The most damaging affair was ongoing -- a tumultuous relationship that ended only with Henry's death.

For Julie, the only thing to do was to get at the real truth--to strip away the veneer of "perfection" that was her life and confront each of the women beneath the veneer. Perfection is the story of Julie Metz's journey through chaos and transformation as she creates a different life for herself and her young daughter. It is the story of coming to terms with painful truths, of rebuilding both a life and an identity after betrayal and widowhood. It is a story of rebirth and happiness -- if not perfection.

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal

Perfection

Nathaniel. Hawthorne

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Ohio

A young woman, publicly scorned for bearing an illegitimate child, refuses to be vanquished by the Puritanical seventeenth-century Boston community in which she lives. Reissue.

The Scarlet Letter (Bantam Classic)

d1223056-57d8-4eb0-8039-c29a99473539-1

Belva Plain

The Grey family, a wealthy, successful, socially elite dynasty built by patriarch Oliver Grey, is being torn apart by greed, adultery, jealousy, allegations of sexual abuse, and murder. 225,000 first printing. $225,000 ad/promo.

The Carousel

821bffbd-4ca4-460c-925a-c681d900669c-1

AN INDIE NEXT PICK
A BOOKLIST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH
A POPSUGAR BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH

From the author of New York Times bestseller The Tourist...

Sophie Kohl is living a nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level American diplomat in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot and killed.

Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when, this time, he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved ask why her husband has been assassinated.

Omar Halawi has worked in Egyptian intelligence for years, and he knows how to play the game. But the murder of a diplomat in Hungary has ripples all the way to Cairo, and Omar must follow the fallout wherever it leads.

As these players converge on Cairo, Olen Steinhauer masterfully unveils a portrait of a marriage, a jigsaw puzzle of loyalty and betrayal, against a dangerous world of political games where allegiances are never clear and outcomes are never guaranteed.

The Cairo Affair

613381fd-7f7b-4d87-a65a-adba4711d09f-1

Judith John

Lasting from 1485 to 1603--just 118 years--the Tudor dynasty was short-lived, but it was filled with some of the most famous, notorious, and intriguing British monarchs. Their legacy lives on in many dark and disreputable stories, including murder, execution, treason, false imprisonment, adultery, and religious turbulence.

Texas

Murder, Adultery, Incest, Witchcraft, Wars, Religious Persecution, Piracy

A Dark History: Tudors

8bfda3ec-4897-468f-b1fd-8e3800a708a5-1

Helen Fisher

This book is a clean copy with a good spine and binding. The contents and Graphics are in good condition. There is minimal wear inside. There is slight wear on the paperback cover. Will ship within hours after your order is received. Thanks for stopping by and please stay safe.  B31

A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray

Anatomy of Love

52b323f3-6f31-4e47-9d4e-aaf4f586bb99-1

Washington

Proposition 31

Spine and all pages intact and in good condition 
Cover is marred on front and back by stain 
Stains on bottom edge few pages in back of book


Viking Press, 1948, 306 pages 

In a British colony in West Africa, Henry Scobie is a pious and righteous man of modest means enlisted with securing borders. But when he’s passed over for a promotion as commissioner of police, the humiliation hits hardest for his wife, Louise. Already oppressed by the appalling climate, frustrated in a loveless marriage, and belittled by the wives of more privileged officers, Louise wants out.

Feeling responsible for her unhappiness, Henry decides against his better judgment to accept a loan from a black marketeer to secure Louise’s passage. It’s just a single indiscretion, yet for Henry it precipitates a rapid fall from grace as one moral compromise after another leads him into a web of blackmail, adultery, and murder. And for a devout man like Henry, there may be nothing left but damnation.

California

The Heart of the Matter 

Massachusetts

Disraeli in Love

Susan Rivers

Michigan

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE “Taut, almost unbearable suspense . . . This galvanizing historical portrait of courage, determination, and abiding love mesmerizes and shocks.” —Booklist (starred review) “All I had known for certain when I came around the hen house that first evening in July and saw my husband trudging into the yard after lifetimes spent away from us, a borrowed bag in his hand and the shadow of grief on his face, was that he had to be protected at all costs from knowing what had happened in his absence. I did not believe he could survive it.” When Major Gryffth Hockaday is called to the front lines of the Civil War, his new bride is left to care for her husband’s three-hundred-acre farm and infant son. Placidia, a mere teenager herself living far from her family and completely unprepared to run a farm or raise a child, must endure the darkest days of the war on her own. By the time Major Hockaday returns two years later, Placidia is bound for jail, accused of having borne a child in his absence and murdering it. What really transpired in the two years he was away? Inspired by a true incident, this saga conjures the era with uncanny immediacy. Amid the desperation of wartime, Placidia sees the social order of her Southern homeland unravel as her views on race and family are transformed. A love story, a story of racial divide, and a story of the South as it fell in the war, The Second Mrs. Hockaday reveals how that generation--and the next--began to see their world anew.

The Second Mrs. Hockaday

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Pennsylvania

Hester Prynne is ostracized from her seventeenth-century Puritan community for refusing to name the father of her child, the product of an adulterous relationship.

The Scarlet Letter

Paulo Coelho

Georgia

A woman around her thirties begins to question the routine and predictability of her days. In everybody's eyes, she has a perfect life: a solid and stable marriage, a loving husband, sweet and well-behaved children and a job as a journalist she can't complain about. However, she can no longer bear the necessary effort to fake happiness when all she feels in life is an enormous apathy. All that changes when she encounters an ex-boyfriend from her adolescence. Jacob is now a successful politician and, during an interview, he ends up arousing something in her she hadn't felt for a long time: passion.

Adultery

0fadd93f-66d9-4531-828f-472ba7f7f7f5-1

Katherine Mosby

This is the unforgettable story of one woman's sexual and political awakening in the years preceding World War II. Lavinia Gibbs avoids a stifling marriage, enraging her socially prominent parents, and sails off to Europe to rebuild and discover her life.

Twilight

77338f51-3cd4-4420-8b43-3a2bf700dc9d-0

Used - read copy some creases and folds at corners of cover and spine 
Pages yellowing 
Spine is still in good condition 

Avon Books, 1971, 251 pages 

"A second novel which directs a very level look at the groundswells of a marriage and which in its detached scrutiny provides a portrait which is careful rather than concerned. Centered here is Sybil, defensively indifferent, self-conscious and critical as she wars against her family- and social pressures, until she meets and falls in love with Philip, a rather obvious young man of great eligibility. Philip, appreciative of the steadfast affection she offers him, marries her, is off to war, and on his return retreats from her submissive devotion in an occasional affair, until it narrows down to Julie who is determined to marry him. The breakup of their marriage leads to a tortured summer for Sybil, an aggressive attempt at an affair, until finally she compromises with herself and allows Philip, momentarily chastened, to come back....An intelligent rather than intense perspective of private lives, acerb in its social commentary as well."--Kirkus

Sybil

Virginia

Nina Schuyler

First edition
I absolutely adored this book; kind of mystified why it is rated an average 3.3 out of 5 on Goodreads.   The hardcover book is an actually pretty good condition. However it does have  staining along the outer portion of the pages due to spilt drink, and therefore listed as in fair condition 

In 1869 Japan, a young woman escapes the confines of her arranged marriage by painting memories of her lover and secretly wrapping the painting around a ceramic pot bound for Europe, where it falls into the hands of a disenchanted young man, in the story of how the lives of four very different characters are transformed by the painting. A first novel.

The Painting

a213496d-f1f7-4de8-9f01-297b3a217a81-1

Julian Barnes

Indiana

The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending delivers “a remarkably original and subtle book” (The New York Review of Books) about the nature of love and jealousy. At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful novel, a mild-mannered English academic chuckles as he watches his wife commit adultery. The action takes place before she met him. But lines between film and reality, past and present become terrifyingly blurred in this sad and funny tour de force from the author of Flaubert's Parrot.

Before She Met Me

d15ef240-f8b1-49f5-8fa7-e01ab5454206-0

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The pictures show all the pen marks and damage to the book.

North Carolina

New    Never read    

Lyric Charlton has finally left her past behind. She has her adoring family and a lover who worships her, but Lyric is reminded, life follows a very uneven path, and things have a habit of tripping you up when you least expect it. When tragedy strikes at the heart of her family, Lyric's world is once again thrown into turmoil. Suddenly everything she thought was safe threatens to crumble in front of her eyes.

Infidelity

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A Novel in Stories

The aftershocks of a murder-suicide resonate through a small town where everybody knows everybody else's business. By turns hilarious and poignant, this daring, debut novel begins with the violent end of a marriage. A local wife-and-mother has killed her husband after finding him in the midst of an affair. Each chapter, written from a different community member's point of view, shows the ripple effect of that dramatic event and how it has affected the townspeople differently--some directly and others less so, but all meaningfully and irrevocably. As the novel progresses, the narrative spirals inward until the stories of those most intimately involved are ultimately revealed.

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Emma Donoghue

The Sealed Letter

Brian Moore

The Doctors Wife

Loraine Despres

The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell

Julie Metz

Perfection

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter (Bantam Classic)

Belva Plain

The Carousel

Olen Steinhauer

The Cairo Affair

Judith John

A Dark History: Tudors

Helen Fisher

Anatomy of Love

Robert H Rimmer

Proposition 31

Graham Greene

The Heart of the Matter

Maurice Edelman

Disraeli in Love

Susan Rivers

The Second Mrs. Hockaday

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter

Paulo Coelho

Adultery

Katherine Mosby

Twilight

Louis Auchincloss

Sybil

Paulo Coelho

Adultery

Nina Schuyler

The Painting

Julian Barnes

Before She Met Me

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter

Tara Palmer-Tomkinson

Infidelity

Paulo Coelho

Adultery

Virginia Boyd

One Fell Swoop