Sometimes you have to leave your life to find yourself again . . . After more than a dozen moves in twenty-five years of marriage, Joanna Harrison is lonely and tired of being a corporate wife. Her children are grown and gone, her husband is more married to his job than to her, and now they're about to pack up once more. Panicked at the thought of having to start all over again, Joanna commits the first irresponsible act of her life. She runs away to Pawleys Island, South Carolina, a place she's been to just once. She finds a job as a live-in companion to Grace Finelli, a widow who has come to the island to fulfill a girlhood dream. Together the two women embark on the most difficult journey of their lives: Joanna struggling for independence, roots, and a future of her own, as her family tugs at her from afar; and Grace, choosing to live the remainder of her life for herself alone, knowing she may never see her children again. Entwined is Paul Harrison's story as he loses his wife, his job, and everything that defines him as a man. He takes off on his own journey out west, searching for the answers to all that has gone wrong in his life. One thing remains constant: He wants his wife back. Joanna, however, is moving farther away from her old life as she joins a group dedicated to rescuing endangered loggerhead turtles, led by a charismatic fisherman unlike anyone she's ever met. The Richest Season is a stunning debut about three very different people, each changing their lives when such transformations are usually long over. It will resonate with any woman who's ever fantasized about leaving home to find herself.

Having lived in a dozen different towns due to her husband's frequent corporate relocations, Joanna leaves her husband to return to the coastal South Carolina community she loves, while Paul, distraught by Joanna's abandonment, endeavors to win her back.

Palm Beach is known around the world as the most wealthy, glamorous, opulent, decadent, self-indulgent, sinful spot on earth. With their beautiful 3.75 square-island constantly in the media glare, Palm Beachers protect their impossibly rich society from outside scrutiny with vigilant police, ubiquitous personal security staffs, and screens of tall hedges encircling every mansion. To this bizarre suspicious, exclusive world, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler brought his charm, insight, and award-winning investigative skills, and came to know Palm Beach, its celebrated and powerful residents, and its exotic social rituals as no outside writer ever has. In this colorful, entertaining, and compulsively readable book. Kessler reveals the inside story of Palm Beach society as it moves languidly through the summer months, quickens in the fall, and shifts into frenetic high speed as the season begins in December, peaks in January and February, and continues into April. When unimaginable wealth combines with unlimited leisure time oil an island barely three times the size of New York's Central Park, human foibles and desires, lust and greed, passion and avarice, become magnified and intensified. Like laboratory rats fed growth hormones, the 9,800 Palm Beach residents—87 percent of whom are millionaires—exhibit the most outlandish extremes of their breed. To tell the story, Kessler follows four Palm Beachers through the season. These four characters—the reigning queen of Palm Beach society, the night manager of Palm Beach's trendiest bar, a gay "walker" who escorts wealthy women to balls, and a thirty—six-year-old gorgeous blonde who says she "can't find a guy in Palm Beach"—know practically everyone on the island and tell what goes on behind the scenes. Interweaving the yarns of these unfor-gettable figures with the lifestyle, history, scandals, lore, and rituals of a unique island of excess, The Season creates a powerful, seamless, juicy narrative that no novelist could dream up.

A comprehensive study of Britain's 250 richest people in history, from the time of William the Conqueror to the present. In this book, Philip Beresford, the author of The Sunday Times annual 'Rich List' and history expert William D. Rubinstein, have turned their attention to the wealthiest individuals in British history, revealing how they made their fortunes, the role played by luck, contacts and violence, and how successful they were in hanging on to their gains. People like: - William of Warenne, the Earl of Surrey in the 1050s, who if he were alive today would be worth nearly £74bn - over three times richer than Britain's current richest man (steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal). - Archbishop Thomas Beckett, who took 250 servants with him on a visit to Paris in 1158, and was worth over £24bn. Not that his fortune was much use when he was murdered in his own cathedral on the orders of Henry II. - Robert Spencer, forebear of Princess Diana, who made a fortune in the wool trade, owned vast tracts of land in the colony of Virginia. and accumulated a fortune equivalent to £19bn in today's money. - John Scott, a celebrated gambler whose skills and luck helped him to a £500,000 (£3.1bn) fortune. "As rich as Scott" was a popular saying of eighteenth century society. The authors provide a fascinating account of personal wealth and influence, noting how, throughout history, the opportunities for aggrandising wealth have been changed by technology, demographics, taxation, politics and war. If you are interested in business, society and the shifting patterns of advantage then you will find this book absorbing, intriguing and insightful.

In 1911, a self-trained geologist and oil speculator named Tom Slick arrived in Creek County, Oklahoma, convinced that under the ground beneath his feet lay an ocean of black gold. Within a year his instincts proved correct as he opened up what was to become the world-renowned Cushing Field, the source of the best high-grade crude west of the Alleghenies.

Yesterday, July 16, 1898, Louise Lambert's mother was beaten to death by her boss in a shirt factory in Lower Manhattan. Today, her immigrant mother was laid to rest in a charity grave, leaving Louise, 14, orphaned, penniless, desperate. Louise is pulled from the brutality of the seething ghetto streets and swept into the magic of great wealth by her mother's only friend, Cecilia, who arranges a maid's job for Louise in the home of Henry Flagler, a major partner of John. D. Rockefeller in the Standard Oil Company. The remarkable journey of this naive girl delights, startles, shocks, saddens, and intrigues as she unveils the minds and mansions of the super rich and ultra powerful-from oil tycoons and media muckrakers to Teddy Roosevelt, then governor of New York. Louise's journey takes her to Palm Beach, where she discovers the richest people in the world at Flagler's major hotel, the Royal Poinciana-the epitome of the Gilded Age. As a member of the kitchen staff, Louise is captivated by a handsome fisherman who introduces her to the sea and the glories of Florida. Also pursued by the privileged son of a real estate scion, Louise is forced to make a choice between these two ardent suitors. That choice leads Louise to a life no one could have ever predicted or designed. Book One of this trilogy is the threshold to a life that defies grim reality and wild imagination. After conquering her baptism of fire, the once impoverished girl develops into a tenacious young woman, then into a character bigger than life. She is ready for the dream world she never imagined. Or is she? Bonus Chapter for Book Two As a special "thank you" gift with your purchase of this first book introducing you to Louise Lambert, we have included the first chapter of The Richest Woman in the World - Book Two.

No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green, America’s first female tycoon. A strong woman who forged her own path, she was worth at least $100 million by the end of her life in 1916—equal to about $2.5 billion today. Green was mocked for her simple Quaker ways and her unfashionable frugality in an era of opulence and excess; the press even nicknamed her “The Witch of Wall Street.” But those who knew her admired her wit and wisdom, and while financiers around her rose and fell as financial bubbles burst, she steadily amassed a fortune that supported businesses, churches, municipalities, and even the city of New York. Janet Wallach’s engrossing biography reveals striking parallels between past financial crises and current recession woes, and speaks not only to history buffs but to today’s investors, who just might learn a thing or two from Hetty Green.