Irresistible Forces

by Danielle Steel

Published 2 November 1999
For fourteen years, Steve and Meredith Whitman have sustained a marriage of passion and friendship - despite the demands of two all-consuming careers. Meredith, an investment banker, has achieved partnership in one of Wall Street's top firms. Steve, a gifted physician, chose an urban trauma ward over the big money he could have earned elsewhere. The only thing missing in their lives is children. Steve longs for them. But Meredith keeps putting off motherhood, saying she isn't ready and doesn't have time. Not yet. Especially now that she has been offered an extraordinary opportunity, a chance to reach for the brass ring - in San Francisco, three thousand miles away. Meredith is thrilled and surprised when Steve urges her to accept a top position at an exciting young high-tech company. Traditionally, men's careers force families to move to new cities, compelling their wives to abandon friends, homes, and lives to follow. But Steve is more than willing to uproot himself, saying he'll join her, as soon as he can find a new job himself. Perhaps in California, he hopes, they can begin their family at last.
Neither Steve nor Meredith had reckoned on the frustrations of a bi-coastal marriage, as Steve's job keeps him in New York for months longer than planned. Weekends together, their lifeline, fall prey to their hectic schedules. Alone in San Francisco, Meredith is spending long hours at the office with her boss, charismatic entrepreneur Callan Dow. Steve is working late shifts at the hospital, grabbing an occasional dinner with a new colleague, a doctor raising a daughter on her own. Almost unnoticed, Steve and Meredith have begun living separate lives in increasingly separate worlds. And despite the best of intentions, irresistible forces begin to tear their lives and hearts apart. With unerring insight, Danielle Steel explores what happens when lives that fit together like delicately balanced puzzles are shifted, changed and drift apart. Only time can tell who and what they will become as life sweeps them onward and deposits them on new, sometimes frightening, and often exciting shores. Who survives, how well they survive, and if love survives, is at the core of Irresistible Forces.

The Kiss

by Danielle Steel

Published 23 October 2001
Trapped in a loveless marriage, Frenchwoman Isabelle cares for her daughter and dangerously ill son while pursuing a secret friendship with American power broker Bill Robinson, until a car accident tests their growing love.

The Wedding

by Danielle Steel

Published 1 May 1997
In #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel’s riveting novel, a Hollywood wedding sets the scene for a vivid portrayal of a prominent family whose hopes and fears are as real as our own.

Simon Steinberg and Blaire Scott are among the most respected couples in Hollywood. Simon, a major movie producer, and Blaire, an award-winning television writer, have defied the Hollywood cliches, keeping their marriage together for decades. Their three children—aspiring teenage model Samantha, pre-med student Scott, and entertainment lawyer Allegra—are successful and happy but must face the challenges we fear for our own children as well.

As an attorney for the stars, twenty-nine-year-old Allegra Steinberg is used to handholding her celebrity clients through their tangled lives and loves, negotiating major movie deals, and fielding phone calls at all hours of the day and night. But with a career that consumes so much of her time, Allegra has little time for a private life. Until a chance encounter with a New York writer turns Allegra's life upside down. And suddenly, she finds herself planning a wedding at her parents' Bel Air home.

As preparations begin for a September ceremony, the chaos of last-minute arrangements, surprise announcements, and ever-increasing anxiety brings out both the best and the worst in everyone. But as couples in each generation of the Steinberg family struggle with broken vows and new hopes, the real meaning of Allegra's wedding emerges. For the bride, the ceremony is a bridge between her past and her future. For her parents, it is a reminder of the bond that holds them all together. And for both families, it is an opportunity for reconciliation, forgiveness, and new hope for the future, as weddings often are for us all.

In a compelling portrait of real people in an unreal world, Danielle Steel uses Hollywood as a backdrop to reveal the dreams, the fears, and the expectations of a ceremony that unites us all—from movie stars to long-married couples to nervous teenagers—and changes the lives of real men, women, and families forever. . . .

Zoya

by Danielle Steel

Published 1 January 1988
Against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution  and World War I Europe, Zoya, young cousin to  the Tsar, flees St. Petersburg to Paris to find safety. Her entire  world forever changed, she faces hard times and joins the   Ballet Russe in Paris. And then, when life is kind to her,  Zoya moves on to a new and glittering life in New York. The  days of ease are all too brief as the Depression strikes, and  she loses everything yet again. It is her career, and the man she  meets in the course of it, which ultimately save her, as she  rebuilds her life through the war years and beyond. And it is  her family that comes to mean everything to her. From the roaring twenties to  the 1980's, Zoya remains a rare and spirited  woman whose legacy will live on.

The House on Hope Street

by Danielle Steel

Published 27 June 2000
In eighteen years of marriage, Liz and Jack Sutherland had built a family, a successful law practice, and a happy home near San Francisco, on Hope Street. Then, in an instant, it all fell apart.

It began like any other Christmas morning. But for Jack Sutherland, a five-minute errand ends in tragedy. And suddenly, Liz is alone, in the wake of an unbearable loss.

How can she go on without her husband, her partner, her best friend? How can she grieve when she must console five devastated children, including one with special needs?

Powered by her children's love, Liz finds the strength to return to work, to become both mother and "daddy." One by one the holidays come and go, until a devastating accident sends her oldest son to the hospital—and brings Dr. Bill Webster into her life. Bill becomes a friend to Liz as he slowly heals her shattered son.

With the first anniversary of Jack's death approaching, and with it another Christmas in the house on Hope Street, a new relationship offers new hope, and Liz reflects on the little blessings that give strength when nothing else is left. But she will face one more crisis before she can look ahead to the beginning of a new life.

The House on Hope Street is about learning to live again after you think life is over. It is about cherishing small miracles, and believing in big ones. It is above all about hope.

Johnny Angel

by Danielle Steel

Published 1 July 2003
Johnny Peterson was the kind of lad who could light up a room and inspire the best in everyone he met. Then one night he was killed by a car. Appearing only to his withdrawn younger brother and his grief-stricken mother, Johnny's appearances as an angel will change the lives of everyone

Answered Prayers

by Danielle Steel

Published 29 October 2002
On the outside, Faith Madison is the very picture of a sophisticated New Yorker. Slim, blond, stylish, Faith has a life many would envy. Overcoming a childhood marked by tragedy, married to a successful investment banker and having raised two grown daughters, Faith has enjoyed her role as mother and wife, and the good life that emanates from their bustling Manhattan townhouse. But every step of the way, Faith has carried within her a secret she could divulge to no one. And with it, she has kept an even more painful secret from herself. For Faith, it is the sudden death of her stepfather - a man who, like her husband Alex, always remained just beyond her reach - that will touch off a journey of change and revelation. At the funeral, painful memories flood back - and an old friend re-enters Faith's life. Faith is greeting mourners when she hears a voice behind her and a single word that brings a quick smile to her face: "Fred." Only one person, aside from her older brother, Jack, called her that Brad Patterson was Jack's best friend, a long, lanky boy who teased, tormented, and protected Faith when they fancied themselves "The Three Musketeers" as kids.
When Jack died years later, Faith and Brad came together again in their common, inconsolable grief, then lost touch once more amid the demands of families and busy lives a continent apart. Now a lawyer in California, Brad has re-entered Faith's life just as she is making a decision that plunges her marriage into crisis. Determined to fulfill a long-held desire for a career of her own, Faith applies to law school against her husband's wishes, igniting a barrage of anger and recrimination. Faith's only solace is the correspondence she has begun with Brad, a man trapped in an empty marriage of his own, a friend she once lost and has found again. Soon emails are flying between them, bridging 3000 miles, sharing much-needed friendship, support, laughter. And as these two childhood friends rediscover each other, something extraordinary is beginning to happen. In the safety of their friendship, Brad will find the courage to make a decision he should have made years before. And Faith, too, is changing, beginning to believe in herself - and in her right to grab hold of her dreams.
Gathering a strength she never knew she had, Faith is finally ready to face the most painful step of all: of sharing the secret that has long been haunting her, and truly opening up her heart for the first time in her life. With unerring insight into the hearts of husbands and wives, lovers and families, Danielle Steel tells a wise and moving story of the secrets that wound and the choices that heal - and of the second chances that come only once in a lifetime.