My WorksRITTENHOUSE SQUARE
Benjamin Butler, a young associate at the big oak-paneled Philadelphia law firm of Conyers & Dean, is loaned to the city's Public Defender Association for a month. The time is 1964; pent-up racial tensions are exploding. Ben Butler, brought up on the Main Line, suddenly sees a his big old city from a very different point of view. He learns a lot about the real world and about himself, and finally must make decisions that will affect the rest of his life. ALEXANDER'S FEAST
Graham Anders,33, is a succcessful corporation partner in the big Philadelphia law firm of Conyers & Dean. He is very busy, and harrassed by a lot of problems--some of his own doing. In the midst of one complicated deal, his law school professor, now also his buddy, invites him to dinner: "Graham, you're looking a little pooped...little too much of everything...Too much C&D? Too much your wife's family? Too much stock market...booze...and if you'll forgive me, dear boy, a little too much nooky?" Thus Graham Anders is invited to attend a law seminar at a palace in Salzburg, the beautiful Austrian city where he was stationed as an 18-year old soldier right after World War II, the place where he met the great first love of his life... ALEXANDER'S FEAST combines American business takeovers with international intrigue at the height of the Cold War, the summer the Berlin Wall went up. Graham Anders has to make decisions that will involve his wife, his wife's big company, his law firm ...and his country. THE COMFORT LETTER
What is a comfort letter? Whenever a big business deal closes--stock issue, bond issue, merger--the outside accountants must give written "comfort" by assuring everybody that nothing very bad has happened in the weeks since the financial statements have been published. What if there is a problem? Ordway Smith is no specialist in these matters. Ordway Smith is a popular Philadelphia Gentleman with a handsome wife, two beautiful children--and the unforgettable first love of his youth. He is a "rainmaker" partner in Conyers & Dean, the oldest and biggest firm in town. His job is to bring in business. He has been doing that quite well, through his club memberships, directorships, extensive family connections, and now through his biggest client Charlie Conroy, the gardener's son who fought his way up to become Chairman of a huge international conglomorate. The intricate night-and-day work on Conroy's deals has always been done by Conyers & Dean's brilliant corporate "workhorses", but when Graham Anders, their chief, is suddenly put out of action, Ordway Smith finds himself flying around the country in charge of Conroy's complicated and increasingly risky deals. THE COMFORT LETTER is used in law schools to show students the problems they will face in actual practice. As one famous lawyer said: "The practice of the law would be an unalloyed pleasure, were it not for clients!" A PRINCESS IN BERLIN
Paris, 1922. Peter Ellis, from a prosperous Quaker family in Philadelphia, is recovering from shellshock and learning to paint, but now his family wants him home, to learn a profession. Instead, he goes to Berlin, at the inviation of a former German officer whose life Peter saved. That officer is now employed at the famous private bank of Waldstein & Co. Berlin is in the turmoil created by defeat, revolution, and now hyper-inflation, the frantic time when German money became worthless. Peter Ellis becomes deeply involved in the lives of three very different families: Christoph Keith's family of Prussian officers, impoverished, furious at their loss of power and position; the conspiciously rich and powerful Waldsteins, once Jews, still objects of hatred by Adolf Hitler and his followers; and Fritz Falke, not yet the world-famous painter, who becomes Peter's teacher and his introduction to the frenetic art world of Weimar-era Berlin. Peter falls in love with Lili von Waldstein, but sleeps with his models, Fritz Falke's wife and sister-in-law... In helping his friend Christoph Keith, Peter Ellis becomes involved in one of the most famous political murders in history. A PRINCESS IN BERLIN, a rare work about this period, some ten years before Hitler came to power, has been translated into every European language, plus Turkish. The whole text is also available through ww.google.com TAKEOVER TIME
"Is she really that terrific?" asks Caroline Boatwright Anders, his very loyal, loving wife. Even as he watches his world crumbling around him, Graham Anders still feels that she is. "She" is Karin Bromberg,iridescent German blonde "with the body of a ripe peach and the soul of a ten-year-old spoiled brat" according to Caroline. Karin, divorced from the California father of her children after secret affair with her father-in-law, is in love with Graham Anders but has decided to marry an elderly tycoon, one of the richest men in Philadelphia. Graham's partners at the big law firm of Conyers & Dean see bad trouble coming down the pike, and indeed it comes, as the tycoon, with a German partner, begins a hostile tender offer against the Boatwright Corporation, Caroline's company and the firm's biggest client! Graham Anders flies to Germany--where his father was born--to commence a counterattack, but Karin Bromberg follows him... TAKEOVER TIME takes the reader from Philadelphia's Main Line to Park Avenue and Wall Street to a yacht anchored in the Baltic, all the way back to World War II and the war crimes trial of soldiers in Adolf Hitler's Leibstandarte SS division. This is a gripping story of international finance, and one man's battle with sexual obsession. THE WIFE OF SHORE: A SEARCH
Josephine Tey has taught us that Richard III was not the monster Shakespeare put upon the stage--but why did he persecute his dead brother's beautiful mistress? |
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