cover image By Her Own Design

By Her Own Design

June Triglia. Onyx Books, $5.99 (448pp) ISBN 978-0-451-40424-4

Liz Jeffries gave up a budding career as a clothing designer to marry the boss's son and raise their children. Two decades later, she discovers her husband, Alan, in flagrante delicto on her kitchen table. Liz is initially willing to patch things up, but while she recuperates at a luxurious spa with her best friend, Clare Martin, Alan cancels her credit cards and puts their house on the market. Partly for revenge and partly for survival Liz joins up with Clare and two other women--Italian textile designer Nicolisa Modigliano and sharp Japanese businesswoman Emiko Kokiden--to create clothing geared to the figure problems of middle-aged women. Liz and Alan battle over more than market share when their older son goes to work for Alan's Hong Kong office. Eventually Liz achieves the highest form of contemporary revenge: she dishes about her husband's infidelities on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and after Oprah models one of her slimming designs, the business takes off. Triglia ( Bound By Blood ) constructs a fast-moving tale full of mixed loyalties and sexual power, and her snappy dialogue is perfectly pitched to the way women really talk. (Aug.)