The masterful story of a lifelong friendship between two very different women with shared histories and buried secrets, tested in the twilight of their lives, set across the arc of the 20th century. Celebrated children's book author Agnes Lee is determined to secure her legacy -- to complete what she knows will be the final volume of her pseudonymously written Franklin Square novels; and even more consuming, to permanently protect the peninsula of...

Examines the life of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, covering her Stanford education, her inspirational relationship with her sister Rosemary, her advocacy on behalf of disabled citizens, and her role as founder of the Special Olympics. "While Joe Kennedy was grooming his sons for the White House and the Senate, his Stanford-educated daughter, Eunice was hijacking her father's fortune and her brothers' political power to engineer one of the great civil rights...

"Founder of a beauty empire, Madam C. J. Walker was celebrated as America's first self-made female millionaire in the early 1900s. Known as a leading African American entrepreneur, Walker was also devoted to an activist philanthropy aimed at empowering African Americans and challenging the injustices inflicted by Jim Crow. Tyrone McKinley Freeman's biography highlights how giving shaped Walker's life before and after she became wealthy. Poor and widowed...

Discusses the life and work of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish inventor who developed dynamite and instituted the Nobel Prize.

"A revealing biography of Florence Gould, fabulously wealthy socialite and patron of the arts, who hid a dark past as a Nazi collaborator in 1940s Paris. Born in turn-of-the-century San Francisco to French parents, Florence moved to Paris at the age of eleven. Believing that only money brought respectability and happiness, she became the third wife of Frank Jay Gould, son of the railway millionaire Jay Gould. She guided Frank's millions into hotels...

When a philanthropist's involvement in the rescue of a prostitute leads to murder, Sarah Brandt's significant other, Detective Sgt. Frank Malloy, can't prevent her from investigating. Set at the end of the 19th century in New York City.

Relates how the death of the author's photojournalist son at the hands of an angry mob in Somalia led her to transform her grief into something positive by embracing the role of philanthropist and activist to preserve his legacy.

One early morning during spring break, Detectives Phil Knight and Jimmie Stewart are enjoying a golf game at the University of Notre Dame when they find a man apparently suffering a heart attack on the green. They summon help and the man is rushed to the emergency room. But it's too late, the man dies at the hospital and an autopsy suggests that his death was not an accident. The victim-poisoned with deadly nightshade-turns out to be Mortimer Sadler,...