Love & Money

In this entertaining story spanning 1944 to 1988, Harris (The Rich and the Beautiful) again portrays characters who try to assuage their emotional pain by amassing wealth. Russell Dahlen is an immensely rich New Yorker whose family gave its name to the venerable Wall Street investment firm of Lancome & Dahlen. When his daughter Deedee is born, Russell's mistress almost simultaneously gives birth to his illegitimate child, Lana, in Massachusetts. Moreover, Dahlen is immediately banished from Lana's life by the man who will become her stepfather. Years later, Deedee, Manhattan's reigning socialite, becomes engaged to Trip Lancome, the firm's intended president. But she impetuously rejects him to wed Slash Steiner, a Lancome & Dahlen employee intent upon making millions to help him forget his miserable childhood spent in an orphanage. Financial genius Slash builds a fortune while he and Deedee gain celebrity as trendsetters of the 1960s. Since Deedee's sense of self-worth derives almost solely from wealth, Slash must continue to keep her in major baubles. As for embittered Lana, she grows up abused, deprived and chillingly determined to achieve the affluence and respectability required to destroy both Russell and Deedee. Harris will keep her fans engrossed as she accentuates the riskiness and unpredictability of lives spent obsessed with money, setting them against a backdrop of dizzying social change and a volatile stock market. Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild alternates. (May)