An alternate cover edition exists here. Most come to The Beaudelaire Hotel a select few times a year just to indulge in sexual fantasy, but the stakes are higher for Karen Freeman and Paul Beaudelaire this New Year’s weekend. Karen is nine years post-op from a double mastectomy, and her vain ex-husband hadn’t agreed with her decision to remove her remaining good breast or to eschew reconstruction. In the end, that decision cost her. She lost her marriage, but she’s certain the move has prolonged her life. Returning to a normal dating and sex life has been difficult. She hasn’t made love fully unclothed since the demise of her marriage, and her most significant relationship occurred right after her surgery. When she was still recuperating, she had an affair of the heart with a Marine amputee who’d also been her Ph.D. classmate. Paul Beaudelaire once led a charmed life as a ladies’ man who had his pick of women in the upper echelons of New Orleans society. He’d been satisfied to continue in that vein, until a Marine recruiter wooed him from LSU with tales of valor, courage, and commitment. His career in the corps cut short by the loss of his left leg, Paul returned to New Orleans with the best prosthesis Johns Hopkins orthopedics experts could fit him with. However, he left his heart in Baltimore with a beautiful former model, whose crippled marriage was the only deterrent to his waning honor. Will this fantasy weekend at his uncle Henri’s hotel give him a second chance with his contemporary Amazon, or will her fear of rejection be a barrier to their reconnection?