How to use this Page

Another stellar review for Penny Vincenzi's Windfall has arrived: "In London 1935, Cassia Tallow has been married to a practicing doctor Edward for seven years while she has stayed home to raise their three young children. She is somewhat envious of her spouse as she also was trained as a doctor, but he insists she stay at home. Cassia is scrubbing the alter steps when she learns she inherited a fortune from her godmother, Lady Beatty, who drank Champagne with the rich, aristocratic and famous like Edward VIII. With a half a million pounds, Cassia has the means to join the upper crust if she chooses or practice medicine to the neglected working-class women as she once dreamed of; something her husband objects to. However, Cassia soon begins to learn that her liberating windfall may not rightfully belong to her; ethical as always, she investigates with a need to learn the truth. Sometimes the truth will not set you free as Cassia learns that with each revelation comes increasing danger.

This a typical entertaining Penny Vincenzi historical thriller as the ethical heroine tries to do what is right, but finds that dangerous. Cassia makes the story line work as her actions after learning of her WINDFALL place her in opposition with her demanding spouse and to a degree her children, but eventually she goes after what she wants for herself: providing medical care to impoverish women. Fans of the author and those who enjoy a between World Wars English historical will want to read Ms. Vincenzi's blockbuster bonkbuster as the British would say over a cup of Earl Grey. - Midwest Book Review

Booklist takes note of Penny Vincenzi's Windfall: "Cassia Tallow, the independent, only child of a suffragette, wants to be a doctor, but given that she comes of age at the close of World War I, the closest she gets is marrying one. Cassia lives a quiet, pleasant life in West Sussex with her husband and their three children. Until the day she inherits half a million pounds from her sophisticated, slightly eccentric godmother. Suddenly everything is changed; everything is within reach; doors are open to her, and she can do whatever she likes. So Cassia moves to London and splurges on clothes, cars, and anything else she covets that she couldn’t afford before. But while she’s busy jetsetting around London, hanging out with glamorous people, and trying to restart her medical studies, she realizes that she’s hurting her husband and family in more ways than one. Then she begins to wonder where exactly the money she inherited came from. Another stirring novel with an ensemble cast from the prolific and entertaining Vincenzi."

Penny Vincenzi has just released a new novel The Best of Times, published by our friends at Doubleday, that is sure to be a summer bestseller. One of Britian's best-loved and most popular authors since her first novel was published in 1989, Penny Vincenzi has sold over four million books worldwide. Introduced to American readers by The Overlook Press, Penny's beloved backlist titles continue to find new readers. Coming this Fall from Overlook is Windfall, and a new paperback, An Outrageous Affair. For summer reading, we recommend Penny's classic Lytton family trilogy - "The Spoils of Time" - beginning with No Angel, followed by Something Dangerous and Into Temptation.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times includes Penny Vincenzi on her list of best chick-lit reading for the beach this summer: "Snobbery, treachery and status seeking are, of course, staples of the beach-book world. Penny Vincenzi, an accomplished if long-winded British writer whose style Publishers Weekly has called “chickensian,” has a particular affinity for all of the above.

Overlook has brought American readers five glittering epics by Penny Vincenzi, and the sixth will arrive in October with the long awaited publication of An Outrageous Affair. A number-one bestseller in Britain, this delicious page-turner is considered one of Penny's great family dramas.

Publishers Weekly reviews the forthcoming novel from Penny Vincenzi, An Outrageous Affair in this week's issue: "The latest sexy, overblown saga from Vincenzi’s British backlist tracks Lady Caroline Hunterton over 30 years, from the thick of WWII to the height of the counterculture. Her story is framed by an about-to-be-published tell-all from elusive yellow journalist Magnus Phillips, whose book unearths Caroline’s tragic and scandalous past, threatening everything she holds dear, especially the memory of Brendan FitzPatrick, her first love, and their daughter, Fleur. . . .Vincenzi provides plenty of heat and intrigue, and although a significant number of the multiple twists are expected, Vincenzi gives the sprawling whole enough oomph to carry one all the way through." An Outrageous Affair will be available in bookstores in October.

Any of Penny Vincenzi's novels offer romantic reading for Valentine's Day, and the new paperback edition of Almost A Crime is perfect place to start. Last year's The Dilemma is also a great page-turner - Penny's debut novel published in 1996 and only brought to American readers by The Overlook Press in 2007. This October, Overlook will publish An Outrageous Affair, perhaps her most sensational family saga yet. This tale moves from wartime England to fifties Hollywood, from glitzy Madison Avenue to London's theatrical aristocracy.

I've come across some frightening handbags in my time. But have you ever? Just look at them. Sitting there like that. They have to be some of the worst handbags I've ever seen. Quite awful. So awful, in fact, that I wouldn't be at all surprised if it turns out they're Friends and Relations of Clasp herself. (If you don't know who Clasp is, never fear, you soon will.)

I don't know their names (if you do, please let me know). But I do know one thing: they are up to no good looking like this. (Particularly that "tri-cornered" one at the bottom. What a horrible show off she is.) And I know one thing else: I wouldn't want any of these dangling off my arm--would you?


This concludes Part 1 in our Handbag Series. In Part Two we will be meeting some more unsavory bags. But no posting about handbags is complete without a recital of the famous, the notorious, the completely addictive... the song everyone is singing... the song that belongs to The Handbag Friends--and to... YOU!

Get ready (really, it's the only sensible thing to do when faced with such dreadful handbags) ... sing!

p.s. to buy Rosie's CD
(so you, too, can play it on endless repeat)
click here!

isn't it time?

yes, of course it is

(it's always time
because you just never know when
a not altogether friendly
very large
purple
handbag might be in the vicinity
lurking)

QUICK! Let's help those poor Handbag Friends and do what Harry says and sing! (dancing's allowed, too--but not so much running away and screaming).