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Twenty-two short stories that will lift your spirits or break your heart from acclaimed author Warren Adler, well known for iconic novel turned international box-office hit The War of the Roses. Written to celebrate the author’s return to New York City after 40 years away from it, Adler focuses his laser eye on New York City in these 22 deftly crafted and compelling short stories. New York, the frenetic, tough-minded, generous-hearted city, magnet for people’s hopes and aspirations, is as vividly and lovingly portrayed here as any of the characters.

Jack Cooper is an unhappy man - mind, body, and spirit. In the blink of an eye, he has lost his longstanding job to the economy, his mother to illness, and his wife to her secret lover. Beaten, broken, and crippled by tragedy, he withdraws into total isolation, narrowing his life down to the simplest of routines in order to block out the pain. His day begins with a strenuous workout at the Bethesda Health Club, his personal oasis where his mind and body can be free, and ends in his tiny apartment, where he escapes from reality with his books until he can lose himself in sleep.

Vivien Simpson is a happy stay-at-home mom with a young son who adores her successful husband. Edward Davis is an ambitious aide to an important Congressman who loves his wife. When a plane crash brings about the discovery that their supposedly loving and now-deceased spouses were entangled in a deeply passionate love affair, they are devastated and baffled by the revelation. Determined to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, they embark on a hunt for the truth behind their spouses’ infidelity, guided only by the two mysterious identical keys they left behind.

Detective Fiona Fitzgerald is an unlikely force for justice in Washington, D.C.'s predominantly male police force. As a senator's daughter and top investigator in the homicide division of the Metropolitan Police Department, Fiona maneuvers between two vastly different worlds, moving quickly from opulent state galas to gritty crime scenes. Former Washington Post reporter Jason Martin knows there's something secretive going on in the high echelons of politics, and he wants to prove it.

As Great Britain and the United States celebrate a victorious end to WWII, Joseph Stalin's relentless Soviet Union is creeping across Eastern Europe, leaving a trail of devastation and murder in its wake. Winston Churchill, the cigar-puffing icon of the British fighting spirit, embarks on a crusade to lift the veil of secrecy that hangs over Stalin's mission. Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri sets the diplomatic stage upon which the world's political players grapple for supremacy as Churchill delivers his fated Iron Curtain speech on March 5, 1946.

Rumors are abuzz at the Supreme Court that an associate justice has a not-so-secret sadomasochistic fetish. When Metropolitan Police detective Fiona Fitzgerald is called in to investigate the city's latest gruesome murder that involves S&M, she is forced to look at these rumors - and face her own painful memories.

When an outspoken senator is found dead, there isn't enough evidence to point to the senator's death as a suicide, as everyone thinks. There is something just too perfect about the life of Frances "Frankie" McGuire - mother, Irish Catholic congresswoman from Boston, and powerful pro-life senator. Sergeant Fiona Fitzgerald, daughter of a Senator, takes nothing at face value, especially when politics are involved. Everyone in Washington has a secret, and the senator's personal world turns out to be much more complicated than anyone ever knew.

Detective Fiona Fitzgerald is an unlikely force for justice in Washington, DC's predominantly male police force. As a Senator's daughter and top investigator in the homicide division of the Metropolitan Police Department, Fiona maneuvers between two vastly different worlds, moving quickly from opulent State galas to gritty crime scenes.

During the bad old days of the Soviet Union, famous American cancer specialist Dr. Alex Cousins is sent by the president of the United States to Russia to prolong the life of the secretary general of the Politburo. While in Russia, Cousins learns that the Soviets plan to attack China. Suspecting that he knows their secret, the Soviets send him home via the Trans-Siberian Express, which, they hope, will keep him silent until it is too late to stop the attack.

Armed with the emotional mayhem inherited from their parents as well as compounded pressures involving a depraved headmaster, clandestine affairs, and Victoria's male-hating mother, The Children of the Roses presents a gripping story of the lengths to which parents will go to protect their children. Little more than a child herself, Josh's ever-sympathetic and overstuffed sister, Evie, lavishes her "food is love" obsession on her beloved niece and nephew, who are coping with their own sense of loss.

A small town girl from the Midwest is carried away by her "Prince Charming" to the super charged canyons of modern New York City. Warned by her uptight advertising executive husband to beware of strangers, the newlywed cannot repress her small town upbringing and instinctive innocence. She eventually befriends many of the offbeat and quirky tenants in her apartment building and enters into their complicated and sometimes tragic lives.

When a string of inexplicable murders rocks the hallowed streets of central D.C., Fiona finds herself charging through the shadows of a mysterious conspiracy. Faced with an investigation with no leads and a rising body count, Fiona's reputation as a top investigator is called into question. At the brink of professional ruin, an encounter with the eccentric yet charismatic Thaddeus Remington III at his museum-like mansion sends Fiona hurtling headlong through a whirlwind of clues.

Eighty-three-year-old Harvey Franklin never thought he would find love again after losing his wife of more than 50 years. Spending his days walking his beloved poodle in Central Park, he has gotten used to the idea of being alone. Everything changes the morning he meets 80-year-old Sarah Silverman. Romance blooms between the two, and they quickly become entangled in a passionate love affair. When Sarah reveals her husband's battle with dementia, things become complicated....

When their 23-year-old daughter goes missing, divorcees Harry and Paulie are forced to leave behind their newly constructed lives to track Grace down. But Grace isn't lost, not physically at least. They find her seemingly unharmed in California on a sunny farm the other residents call 'Camp Star'. But nothing is as it seems.... Sinister motives lurk behind the smiles of those at the camp, and the two soon learn that Grace is in the clutches of a notorious cult. Under the spell of mind control, she denies Harry and Paulie as her family and shuns their love.

A firebombing of a black church in Brooklyn that was once a synagogue sets off a chain reaction of international intrigue and bloody violence. The fire bombers are young men of Arab extraction who mistakenly believe that this church is still a synagogue. In the wake of the bombing, a Wall Street firm sends its token Jewish lawyer to help the church in their insurance claim. In a walled-off area in the basement of the church, the pastor has found three huge trunks filled with gold and precious jewels.

Emmy award-winning actress Cynthia Nixon brings her experience as a life-long New Yorker to this special reading of Warren Adler's New York Echoes. New York itself becomes a character in these seven deftly crafted and compelling stories. As in his celebrated novels, Adler's themes in New York Echoes deal primarily with human relationships ¿ the mysterious nature of love and attraction; the fragile bond between husbands and wives, and parents and children; the divide between generations.

Warren Adler focuses his laser eye on New York City in these 15 vividly rendered short stories, where human relationships are at the center of them all. In a continuation of New York Echoes 2, Adler's themes in New York Echoes 3 deal primarily with intimate human relationships - the bittersweet pangs of first love, the stark reality of regret, revenge, and coming to terms with the past.

Thirty-five-year-old Jenny and her 62-year-old mother Norma have always seen the world differently. Estranged for years, everything changes when Jenny learns of Norma’s dire state and rushes to New York City to make a startling discovery: her mother is sick and homeless. Living in a women’s shelter slated to be shut down by developer Albert “Doc” Brenner, Norma is leading the charge in stopping him. When Jenny learns that Norma is dying of cancer, she gives her mother something that she’s always wanted. Will it be enough? Can mother and daughter put their differences aside before time runs out?

In an attempt to reconnect with his two alienated adult children, George Temple replicates the memorable horse trek through the forbidding Yellowstone wilderness they had enjoyed 20 years earlier. But his callous children, Courtney and Scott, accompany him only to persuade him to restore the financial support he has withdrawn. As they are led by a drunken guide and a venal horse wrangler over potentially lethal terrain, their bonding experience quickly disintegrates.

Ken Kramer and his wife, Maggie, appear to have a comfortable life and loving marriage. But their peaceful life is shattered when Ken is taken along on a business dinner and introduced to Maggie’s major client, Eliot, and his wife, Carol - who happens to be Ken’s old flame. Though Carol was once the love of his life and the object of his sexual obsession as a young man, the Carol he meets seems determined to not recognize him at the dinner table. Baffled by her non-recognition, he learns that she has totally reinvented herself.