Seconds

Best friends Anne Burrows, an ex-stewardess whose husband's financial clout now fuels her career as a dress designer, socialite do-gooder Sienna Marvell, still insecure from a wretched childhood, and prominent real estate broker Bronwyn Ashter, daughter of a Bronx druggist, all second wives of wealthy dynamos, have risen to the peak of New York society with the aid of kindly dowager Virginia Payne North. Now Virginia has fallen for Gregory Sawyer, the mountebank who ran a summer school for troubled teenagers where the trio, years ago, met and played a prank that turned tragic. Gregory may expose and ruin not just the women, but also their husbands, unless the three socialites help him bilk their friend Virginia. Meanwhile, Sienna cannot have the child she wants, Anne cannot stand the children she has, and Bronwyn is obsessed with her baby daughter. The friends' many-layered dilemmas are resolved in improbable reversals of fortune only a trace more believable than the situation that made them vulnerable in the first place. This less-than-gripping novel studded with thumbnail sociology is a letdown from the bestselling author of Funny, You Don't Look Like a Grandmother. First serial to Redbook; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. (June)