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“What’s up with all the headless women?” As an editor, the last thing you think anyone is going to say to you is, “Hey, do you want to be the model for a few book jackets?” But when our jacket designer needed more photos for the repackaged Jean Plaidy series, she realized she had the funds to hire the photographer but not a model; and thus the editor-model hybrid was born.

A woman tells her friends she’s engaged and there are celebrations in the streets. My congratulations! A man tells his friends and we roll out the funeral procession. My condolences. Somewhere along the way, marriage and masculinity became mutually exclusive. Maybe it’s always been that way, but I don’t buy it.

Celebrate your book group with an all-out Tuscan feast! Frances Mayes shares recipes from Every Day in Tuscany perfect for making your meeting as warm and delicious as the Italian countryside.

Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore, makes even the most shocking story of today’s socialites look tame by comparison. A favorite of book groups and historical fiction fans alike, Wedlock is the true story of the disastrous marriage and remarkable divorce of one of 18th-century England’s richest, most free-wheeling heiresses.

When we think of the staid traditions of Parliament, “adventure sex” doesn’t usually come to mind (but maybe in our world full of political scandal, it should). In The Birthday Present, Barbara Vine tells a compulsively readable story of obsessive desire and dark twists of fate.