Read with Julia

Original cover edition of ASIN B07J4LPZRN here. First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz is the closest thing to a prince this side of the Atlantic. With his intrepid sister and the Veep’s genius granddaughter, they’re the White House Trio, a beautiful millennial marketing strategy for his mother, President Ellen Claremont. International socialite duties do have downsides—namely, when photos of a confrontation with his longtime nemesis Prince Henry at a royal wedding leak to the tabloids and threaten American/British relations. The plan for damage control: staging a fake friendship between the First Son and the Prince. As President Claremont kicks off her reelection bid, Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret relationship with Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations. What is worth the sacrifice? How do you do all the good you can do? And, most importantly, how will history remember you?

Versailles, 1912. At the height of an intoxicating Paris summer, a mysterious American millionaire attends a sumptuous costume ball with his bride, on whom he has bestowed the legendary Phoenix Crown—a priceless relic of Beijing’s fallen Summer Palace. The party of the century kicks off with three hundred guests, nine hundred bottles of champagne—and one quest for justice that spans two continents and six years. San Francisco, 1906. In a bustling city of newly minted millionaires and hopeful upstarts, four very different women cross paths: a resourceful Chinatown embroideress desperately searching for her lost love, a silver-voiced soprano who performs alongside Enrico Caruso, a mysteriously disappeared artist, and an independent female botanist obsessed with collecting a rare flower that only blooms at night. One man seemingly holds the key to their questions: Henry Thornton, the charming railroad magnate whose extraordinary collection of Chinese antiques includes the Phoenix Crown. The women’s lives are thrown into chaos when the San Francisco earthquake rips the city apart and Thornton disappears . . . leaving a mystery in his wake that reaches further than anyone could have imagined.