A wealthy and notorious clan, the Bellefleurs live in a region not unlike the Adirondacks, in an enormous mansion on the shores of mythic Lake Noir. They own vast lands and profitable businesses, they employ their neighbors, and they influence the government. A prolific and eccentric group, they include several millionaires, a mass murderer, a spiritual seeker who climbs into the mountains looking for God, a wealthy noctambulist who dies of a chicken...

Former socialite Barbara Lavette is unconcerned about the gossip that surrounds her new marriage. However, her husband Bernie, a poor mechanic whom she met in the midst of World War II, is willing to do anything to prove his worth to her as well as the society that shuns him.

"Marie-Grace can't wait to begin her journey up the Mississippi River with her father. The steamboat they're traveling on is the biggest and fanciest boat Marie-Grace has ever seen. It's crowded with all sorts of interesting passengers, including Wilhelmina Newman, a girl her age. Wilhelmina is traveling alone, and she's carrying a secret in one of her trunks--clues to hidden Gold Rush treasure. Marie-Grace and Wilhelmina have to unravel the clues...

"Meet Vanessa Salomon, a privileged and misanthropic French-American translator hailing from a wealthy Parisian family. Her twin sister is a famous movie star, which Vanessa resents deeply and daily. The only man Vanessa ever loved recently killed himself by jumping off the roof of her building. It's a full life. Vanessa has just started working on an English translation of a titillating, experimental thriller by a dead author when she's offered a...

This sequel to "The Immigrants" depicts the life of Barbara Lavette, daughter of the son of a poor Italian immigrant and a woman of San Francisco's elite, from the Depression through World War II.

An affluent black family fights against illness and death when a terrible outbreak of yellow fever strikes New Orleans in the summer of 1853.

Describes the author's childhood relocation from France to the U.S., where as a naturalized citizen he joined the military and served multiple tours in Afghanistan before he was wounded while protecting his patrol from a suicide bomber.

When Marie-Grace discovers a baby outside her father's office and a slave catcher claims the boy, she helps place him at a white orphanage where she becomes a volunteer, as her friendship with Cécile grows and she hears rumors of yellow fever.

The Duke leads a regiment of Kentucky riflemen through a French settlement, falls in love with a general's lovely daughter, and locks horns with a rival suitor who has a nefarious land-grabbing scheme up his sleeve. The courtship battle escalates into a full-scale frontier war.

Cécile is enjoying her older brother Armand's return from France and her growing friendship with Marie-Grace, with whom she volunteers at an orphanage, until the yellow fever epidemic theatening New Orleans strikes her own household.