Most Popular Books by Susan Isaacs

Now in paperback, Isaacs''s humorous and poignant "New York Times" bestseller about a young woman whose search for her mother becomes a search for a place to belong. RWell-written, very funny, and incredibly smart.S--"O, The Oprah Magazine."

A rip-roaring tale of sex, politics, and family, in which a witty, almost-pretty speechwriter learns that though you don''t always get what you want, what you do end up with can be even better. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

From bestselling author Susan Isaacs comes her "feisty, funny, and smart" (New York Times) novel about a successful TV writer who once worked for the CIA. Katie seems to have the perfect life—a great husband, a precocious and winning ten-year-old son; and a glamorous job as writer for the long-running TV series, Spy Guys, based on her own surprisingly successful novel. But for Katie, writing about the spy business isn’t as satisfying as working in it. Fifteen years ago, she was working at CIA headquarters. She loved her job, and especially her boss. Then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, she was fired. Katie comes from a family of Manhattan achievers, so it’s been tough to accept such humiliation. She’d give almost anything to know what falsehoods lay in her personnel file. A surprise call from former colleague Lisa gives Katie hope. Lisa says she urgently needs Katie’s help on a matter of national importance and promises to reveal all if Katie will work with her. Then Lisa disappears. One person is dead, then another. Who will be next? With some help from a couple of colorful ex-spies, Katie embarks on a scary mission, leading her back to the extraordinary and eerie days as the Berlin Wall was about to crumble. Flawlessly crafted, witty and suspenseful, Past Perfect is classic Susan Isaacs in top form.

An ex-FBI agent in suburbia feels driven to investigate her neighbor in the “delicious” new novel from the New York Times–bestselling author (Newsday). Just a few years ago, Corie Geller was busting terrorists as an agent for the FBI. But at thirty-five, she traded in her badge and married the brilliant and remarkably handsome Judge Josh Geller, becoming adoptive mother of his lovely teenage daughter. Between cooking meals and playing chauffeur, Corie scouts Arabic fiction for a few literary agencies and, on Wednesdays, has lunch with her fellow Shorehaven freelancers at a so-so French restaurant. Life is, as they say, fine. But at her weekly lunches, Corie senses that something''s off. Pete Delaney, a milquetoast package designer, always shows up early, sits in the same spot (often with a different phone in hand), and keeps one eye on the Jeep he parks in the lot across the street. Corie intuitively feels that Pete is hiding something—and as someone accustomed to keeping her FBI past from her new neighbors, she should know. But does Pete really have a shady alternate life, or is Corie just imagining things, desperate to add some spark to her humdrum suburban existence? The only way to find out is to dust off her FBI toolkit and take a deep dive into Pete Delaney’s affairs . . . “[Isaacs] has us chasing Corie all over the map, charmed by this motormouth sleuth’s snappy wit and awed by her courage.” —The New York Times Book Review “Corie’s combat skills and investigative prowess are still up to snuff, but her snarky commentary and hilarious interactions with her father are the real page-turners here.” —Booklist

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “We’re back on affluent suburban Long Island—Isaacs country—and she doesn’t miss a beat or a bet when describing its inhabitants.” —New York Times Book Review Written with her trademark style, effervescent charm, and snappy wit, New York Times bestselling author Susan Isaacs delivers a delicious and insightful look at love and marriage—and homicide. The day after her lavish wedding anniversary bash, Rosie Meyers gets a big surprise: Her nouveau riche husband, Richie, is leaving her for a sultry, sophisticated, size-six MBA. So, when he''s found murdered in their exquisitely appointed kitchen, no one is surprised to find Rosie''s prints all over the weapon. The suburban English teacher is the prime suspect—the police''s only suspect. And she knows she''ll spend the rest of her life in the prison library unless she can unmask the real killer. Going into Manhattan on the lam, Rosie learns more about Richie than she ever wanted to know. And more about herself than she ever dreamed possible. After All These Years is an irresistible mystery, replete with Isaac’s razor-sharp wit, splendidly drawn characters, and a brave, irreverent heroine readers will love.

He''s an FBI special agent from the mountains. She''s a liberal New York journalist. Both are drawn together as they infiltrate a dangerous hate group. Complete opposites, these two are about to discover they have much more in common than either could possibly imagine. The "New York Times Book Review" calls this novel delightful.

In Susan Isaac''s most ambitious and dazzling novel to date, we are introduced to Lee White, a criminal defense lawyer practicing on Long Island. Into her life drifts Norman Torkelson, a career con man charged with strangling to death his latest mark. At first, as Lee explains to us, the case seems routine, the evidence overwhelming. Norman--manly, magnetic and morally reprehensible--is a man who crisscrosses America looking for patsies for his cruel marriage scam: Love ''em, liquidate their assets, leave ''em. Clearly, he murdered Bobette Frisch, the dumpy, sour 50-something bar owner who had fallen madly in love with him. But just as Lee is resigning herself to the inevitable Guilty verdict, she begins to have doubts. What, after all, was Norman''s motive? Why not do what he had done for the last 20 years: run and leave behind a broke and brokenhearted victim? Lee starts to wonder if her client is not only not guilty but also covering for the real killer and, in doing so, performing the first selfless act of his life. As the Torkelson case unfolds, a second narrator chimes in to tell us the story behind the story: the tale of Lee''s life. Born Lily White, Lee is a smart, pretty and privileged child coming of age on Long Island. Her parents have little time for her or her younger sister, devoted as they are to the pursuit of shallowness. Her mother, Sylvia, who looks like Lauren Bacall''s twin sister with a mild eating disorder, is busy with the exhausting work of keeping up her wardrobe. Her father, Leonard Weissberg--Weiss--and finally White, is consumed by his chi-chi Manhattan fur salon, his model-bookkeeper mistress, and his obsession with the family next door, the old-money, oh-so-social Taylors. When Lee marries Jazz Taylor, the scion of these blue-bloods, her life seems blessed. Suddenly she has her mother''s approval, her father''s love--and a sublime husband. No matter that she has to give up her dream job in the Manhattan DA''s Office to move back to Long Island with him; that''s what marriage is, a series of compromises made in the name of love. Isn''t it? Lily White masterfully interweaves the depths of deception surrounding the twisted Torkelson case with the stunning betrayals that devastate Lee''s own life. With the characteristic intelligence and delicious, razor-sharp wit displayed in her previous bestsellers, such as After All These Years and Compromising Positions, Susan Isaacs has crafted an extraordinary novel about social mobility -- about what is phony and what is real. Lily White is the seamlessly executed story of the crimes committed in the name of the good life and the victims of these violations: Those like Bobette, who do not survive, those whose spirits are crushed, and the few, like Lee, who fight back--and find something better

DIVThe heroine of Compromising Positions returns to investigate a disappearance/divDIV/divDIVWhere did Courtney Logan go? The former investment banker turned suburban dilettante had not lived in Shorehaven for long, but had begun to establish herself there. Her small business—a video production company dedicated to filming newborns—was taking off, and she seemed to have settled into life outside of the big city. Then, suddenly, she disappeared./divDIV /divDIVJudith Singer wants to find her. Two decades after the thrilling case of a murdered dentist, the Long Island housewife is now town historian—and recently widowed. She needs a hobby, and Courtney Logan’s disappearance seems like just her kind of fun./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Isaacs, including rare photos from the author’s personal collection./div

DIVA Long Island housewife investigates the murder of a local dentist in Isaacs’s classic mystery of the dark side of suburbia/divDIV/divDIV Though she can’t admit it to herself, Judith Singer is bored. Each morning she kisses her husband on his way to work, and each evening she fixes him dinner. Three nights a week, they make tepid love. Life in their Long Island split-level is a ho-hum affair, but when a local dentist is murdered in his office, Judith’s curiosity gets the better of her./divDIV /divDIVJudith soon learns that Dr. Fleckstein’s private life wasn’t as immaculate as his smile, and anyone in town might be the murderer. And when her neighbor becomes the chief suspect, Judith must find the real killer or risk losing her only friend in all of suburbia./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Susan Isaacs, including rare photos from the author’s personal collection./div

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From bestselling author Susan Isaacs, Shining Through is a novel of honor, sacrifice, passion, and humor—made into a movie of the same name starring Melanie Griffith, Michael Douglas, and Liam Neeson It''s 1940 and Linda Voss, legal secretary extraordinaire, has a secret. She''s head over heels in love with her boss, John Berringer, the pride of the Ivy League. Not that she even has a chance—he''d never take a second look at a German-Jewish girl from Queens who spends her time taking care of her faded beauty of a mother and following bulletins on the war in Europe. For Linda, though, the war will soon become all too real. Engulfing her nation and her life, it will offer opportunities she''s never dreamed of. A chance to win the man she wants...a chance to find the love she deserves. This is vintage Susan Isaacs, a tale of a spirited woman who wisecracks her way into heroism and history—-and into your heart.

New York Times bestselling author Susan Isaacs returns to a pair of her readers’ favorite characters, former FBI agent Corie Geller and her retired cop dad, who must solve one of the NYPD’s coldest homicide cases—before the crime’s sole survivor is killed When Corie Geller asked her parents to move from their apartment into the suburban McMansion she shares with her husband and teenage daughter, she assumed they''d fit right in with the placid life she’d opted for when she left the Joint Anti-terrorism Task Force of the FBI. But then her retired NYPD detective father gets a call from good-natured and slightly nerdy film professor April Brown—one of the victims of a case he was never able to solve. When April was a five-year-old, she’d emerged unscathed from the arson that killed her parents. Now, two decades later, April is asking for help. Someone has made an attempt on her life. It takes only a nanosecond for Corie and her dad to say yes, and they jump into a full-fledged investigation. If they don’t move fast, whoever attacked the April is sure to strike again. But while her late father, Seymour Brown, was the go-to money launderer for the Russian mob – a mercurial and violent man with a penchant for Swiss watches and cheating on his wife – April Brown has no enemies. Well-liked by her students, admired by her colleagues, her only connection to crime is her passion for the noir movies of Hollywood’s golden age. Who would want her dead now? And who set that horrific fire, all those years ago? The stakes have never been higher. Yet as Corie and her dad are realizing, they still live for the chase. Savvy and surprising, witty and gripping, Bad, Bad Seymour Brown is another standout hit from the beloved Susan Isaacs.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From bestselling author Susan Isaacs comes a rich family saga about marriage, wealth, and celebrity in the midst of personal tragedy—and about the ties that bind us together and the missed opportunities that tear us apart. Nick is stunningly handsome, the blue-eyed scion of a blue-blood New York family. Rich, talented, confident he will become the world''s most famous movie star. Jane is delightfully funny, a dark-skinned, dark-haired, half-Jewish, half-German daughter of the Midwest. Smart, gifted, loving, she will become famous in her own right as well. From the time they first meet in their Social and Intellectual History of the U.S. course at Brown University, it''s love at first sight. Coming together from two very different worlds, they will cast off adversity and disapproval to forge a life filled with work, love, and children. But fame and success come at a high price—their marriage. Just when it seems the promise of their love might be renewed, an accident leaves Jane hovering between life and death. Now, it''s not only their union that might not survive, but Jane, too... Almost Paradise is vintage Susan Isaacs, a witty, poignant, and engrossing tale of a man, a woman, and a passion wondrous, heartbreaking, and unforgettable.

Acclaimed and bestselling author Isaacs'' latest witty and unconventional thriller focuses on a wife''s search for her husband''s killer.

A best-practices guide to parenting: “Kohl’s words kiss instead of chide, support rather than divide . . . luminously reveals the wise parent in us all.” —Lisa Groen Braner, author of The Mother’s Book of Well-Being Parents are doing a better job than they think they are. Author Susan Kohl has been a parent watcher for more than thirty years, and she knows what parents do well. Whether you’re experiencing the first steps of motherhood or fatherhood or simply looking for some compassionate support and problem-solving in your child-rearing adventures, you’ll find tips here on how to raise your child the best way possible. Kohl uses her personal experiences as a preschool director and teacher and includes relevant statistics, psychological truths, and proven strategies to construct positive behavior and discourage negative behavior, with chapters on:The Best Attitudes Parents HoldThe Best Things Parents DoThe Best Things Parents Do for ThemselvesThe Best Things Parents Do for Each Other

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Susan Isaacs brings her wicked wit and keen understanding of what really goes on between men and women to a very different slice of Long Island—the Hamptons. Magic hour. That perfect time, that fleeting hour of enchanted light near dusk and dawn that is perfect for moviemaking, perfect for making love. Perfect for murder. And into the magic hour steps Stephen Brady, wise guy, tough guy, local farm boy turned homicide cop, and a good man with a very bad life. But just as his luck is about to change, the rich, gifted, and urbane filmmaker Sy Spencer is murdered, and Brady discovers that his prime suspect is a woman he and the victim shared. A spellbinding mystery, a scathing social satire and a poignant love story, Magic Hour looks beyond the trendy magazine-cover Hamptons’ world of the summer set’s high-cheekboned elegance and the locals’ down-on-the-farm authenticity into the hearts of real people. Magic Hour is the story of the treacherous murder that rocks them all and of the police detective who is too cold-hearted, too world-weary to ever fall in love—until he does.

Compromising Positions’s Judith Singer is back in a story that delivers plenty of Susan Isaacs’s renowned wit and sharp-eyed observations of the contemporary scene—along with a riveting mystery! Chic Vanessa Giddings, founder and CEO of Panache, the largest employment agency on Long Island, falls into a coma in the designer shoe department of Bloomingdale’s . . . and dies. It’s not long before Judith Singer, former housewife, current widow, and local history professor, decides to investigate. She cannot believe the official ruling: that her wildly successful, confident, and iron-willed neighbor committed suicide with a drug overdose. Vanessa was buying shoes, and Judith knows accessorizing is a life-affirming act. So was it foul play? Tracking the gossip about the late Vanessa and trusting her own acute instincts about human nature, Judith encounters more than a few surprises (including a big romantic one) as she investigates the death—and the life—of the misjudged mogul who turned out to have been more vulnerable than anyone guessed. This ebook features an afterword by Susan Isaacs, as well as an illustrated biography of the author including rare images from her personal collection.

Published in 1948: Parents have many problems. Those dealt with in this are mainly the social and emotional difficulties arising in the development of children in their early years. The material is selected from a much larger bulk of actual letters from parents and nurses which the author answered under the pseudonym of "Ursula Wise" in The Nursery World (published by Benn Bros.)during the years 1929-36.

Why are Jane Eyre, Marge Simpson, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer "brave dames"? What makes Ally McBeal, Madame Bovary, and the good wife Beth from Fatal Attraction "wimpettes"? In this thoroughly witty, incisive look at the role of women on screen and page, Susan Isaacs argues that assertive, ethical women characters are losing ground to wounded, shallow sisters who are driven by what she calls the articles of wimpette philosophy. (Article Eight: A wimpette looks to a man to give her an identity.) Although female roles today include lawyers like Ally McBeal and CEOs like Ronnie of Veronica''s Closet, they are wimpettes nonetheless. A brave dame, on the other hand, is a dignified, three-dimensional hero who may care about men, home, and hearth, but also cares--and acts--passionately about something in the world beyond. Brave dames'' stories range from mundane (Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Show) to romantic (Francesca in The Horse Whisperer) to fantastic (Xena: Warrior Princess), but whatever they do, they care about justice and carry themselves with self-respect and decency. For a Really Brave Dame, think Frances McDormand as the tenacious, pregnant police chief in Fargo. Isaacs''s unmistakable love of fiction and film shines through even her most scathing wimpette assessments. In the end, she urges us to become "more thoughtful critics." The artist, she says, has the right to create whatever he or she pleases--and we have the right "to applaud or to yell, ''Hey, this stinks!''" If we do so, not only will fiction be improved, but so too might real life.

A septuagenarian business owner evaluates her grandchildren as possible successors to her multi-million-dollar beauty empire, including New York movie studio editor Daisy, womanizing sports PR representative Matt, and religious Legal Aid lawyer Raquel.

Addresses the themes of the book as object, subject, and concept, including artist-made books, deconstructed books, and book installations

Visions of Place: Complex Geographies in Contemporary Israeli Art explores Israel''s history, society , culture through the diverse works of its contemporary artists. Issues related to the exhibition''s central theme of geography, considered in the broadest sense, are some of the most pressing ones in the contemporary world. Curated by Dr. Martin Rosenberg, Professor of Art History, Rutgers-Camden, and Dr. J. Susan Isaacs, Professor, Curator of Departmental Galleries and Coordinator of Art History, Towson University, the exhibition presents 52 works by 36 Israeli artists, in a variety of media, demonstrating the richness, complexity and diversity of perspectives in contemporary Israeli art.