One Sunday morning four women at a bridge party in the elegant Gramercy Park Hotel see a beautiful young woman whom they all know leaving a nearby hotel with a man who is not her husband. The sight of twenty-year-old Lizzie Carswell with Billy Holmes is shocking and potentially ruinous. And though the ladies do not know the whole story -- and despite their mutual promise to keep what they've seen to themselves -- it is only a matter of time before one of them talks . . . with heartbreaking consequences for them all. In One Sunday Morning , author Amy Ephron brilliantly navigates the social contradictions of Jazz Age New York society and brings a remarkable time and place to glorious life with a riveting drama of gossip, indiscretion, secrets, and betrayal. “A jewel of a book.” - Reader's Digest “Ephron maintains the suspense through this evocative, smartly paced novel of romantic intrigue.” - People “An exquisite, Edith Wharton-esque novel” - Newhouse News Service “An elegant fable . . . a charming package, a smooth blend of period romance and contemporary wisdom.” - Miami Herald “Book clubs will treasure the precisely rendered atmosphere in this jewel of a novel.” - Chattanooga Times Free Press “A Whartonesque novel of manners . . . [an] exquisitely calibrated story . . . delicate, tasteful . . . Bewitching in its tidy spareness and splendidly light touch.” - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Ephron writes beautifully . . . a Jazz Age take on Sex and the City.” - Entertainment Weekly “Ephron has written another historical novel destined to please her fans. . . . it will entertain you.” - Seattle Times “Amy Ephron is our Edith Wharton. . . . [she] is a master storyteller” - Bookreporter.com One Sunday morning four women at a bridge party in the elegant Gramercy Park Hotel see a beautiful young woman whom they all know leaving a nearby hotel with a man who is not her husband. The sight of twenty-year-old Lizzie Carswell with Billy Holmes is shocking and potentially ruinous. And though the ladies do not know the whole story -- and despite their mutual promise to keep what they've seen to themselves -- it is only a matter of time before one of them talks . . . with heartbreaking consequences for them all. In One Sunday Morning , author Amy Ephron brilliantly navigates the social contradictions of Jazz Age New York society and brings a remarkable time and place to glorious life with a riveting drama of gossip, indiscretion, secrets, and betrayal. Amy Ephron is the bestselling author of the acclaimed novels One Sunday Morning and A Cup of Tea . Her magazine pieces and essays have appeared in Vogue ; Saveur ; House Beautiful ; the National Lampoon ; the Los Angeles Times ; the Huffington Post ; Defamer ; her own online magazine, One for the Table; and various other print and online publications. She recently directed a short film, Chloe@3AM , which was featured at the American Cinematheque’s Focus on Female Directors Short Film Showcase in January 2011. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Alan Rader, and any of their five children who happen to drop in. One Sunday Morning A Novel By Amy Ephron HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2006 Amy Ephron All right reserved. ISBN: 0060585536 Chapter One "She never did understand what it meant to be proper," said Betsy Owen as she turned away from the window in a sweeping motion as though her skirt alone propelled her across the floor. And, there it was, in that one understated sentence, an indictment of all that Lizzie Carswell had ever hoped to be and an acknowledgement that there was a story behind the seemingly innocent act they had all witnessed. Mary wondered, at the time, if Betsy hadn't commented on it or hadn't commented on it in quite the way she did, if it wouldn't have just passed, subsided, receded, if you will, into a faint glancing moment, one of the things you see and then forget about, rather than something as piercing as a shard of glass that becomes forever imbedded in one's memory, so that every time any one of them would see Lizzie Carswell after that, they would remember that morning when they saw her coming out of the Gramercy Park Hotel. A light rain was falling. Mary Nell felt the soft mist on her face, barely an antidote to the piercing hangover she had from the night before and Billy Holmes' party at the Waldorf that she'd stayed at much too long. She'd had to come in the back door and shut it softly, slip her heels off before she hit the tiled entranceway, and tiptoe up the stairs, so as not to wake anyone.Mama would have given her a lecture that she'd "gone wild" again. Papa would have waited until morning and sat her down over coffee and questioned whether she was chasing something that didn't exist, trying to fill a void, suggested that perhaps she should do something useful, not understanding, at all, that it was useful to sit up late at the Waldorf, to dance, to discuss Kant and whet