The Photograph

With Lively's signature mastery of narrative and psychology, "The Photograph" explores a woman's beauty and its threat to her own happiness, the rivalry of sisters, a marriage in supreme crisis, and the cost of professional success as life unfolds.

Booker Prizeawinning novelist Penelope Livelyas latest masterpiece opens with a snapshot: Kath, before her death, at an unknown gathering, holding hands with a man who is not her husband. The photograph is in an envelope marked aDONaT OPENa DESTROY.a But Kathas husband does not heed the warning, embarking on a journey of discovery that reveals a tight web of secretsawithin marriages, between sisters, and at the heart of an affair. Kath, with her mesmerizing looks and casual ways, moves like a ghost through the memories of everyone who knew hera and a portrait emerges of a woman whose life cannot be understood without plumbing the emotional depths of the people she touched.

Propelled by the authoras signature mastery of narrative and psychology, "The Photograph" is Lively at her very best, the dazzling climax to all she has written before.