Amazing Grace

With Bungalow 2 still on bestseller lists, Steel checks in with a Bay Area earthquake that shakes up the lives of three beautiful, talented yet somehow unfulfilled women. Sarah Sloane, 30-something wife of Seth, a wildly successful hedge fund entrepreneur, and mother of two, has planned to perfection a high-ticket charity auction. The only thing she hasn’t counted on is the biggest seismic event to hit San Francisco since 1906 and the aftershocks it will cause in her marriage. Meanwhile, hot Grammy-winning 19-year-old singer Melanie Free, flown in to perform at the benefit, likewise finds her life overturned: following an on-stage triumph, Melanie throws away her platform shoes to assist disaster victims, admitting—much to the annoyance of her pushy stage mother and her TV actor boyfriend—that she always wanted to be a nurse. Sarah and Melanie face change with support from the 40-ish Sister Maggie Kent, a California nun whose good deeds draw the interest of recovering alcoholic and former AP photojournalist Everett Carson, who captures her in pictures. As marriage, faith and vows of chastity are tested, there’s nothing complicated to spoil the romance. Steel delivers a sparkly story with an uplifting spiritual twist. (Oct.)