A beautiful man. A brilliant woman. And a life together that is almost paradise.

Susan Isaacs, bestselling author of Compromising Positions and Close Relations, joins America's first-rank novelists with this rich and complex story of Jane and Nicholas Cobleigh, of the generations that sired them, and of the wide cast of family and friends with whom their lives are intertwined. Nicholas is the handsome, elusive, awesomely aristocratic scion of one of the East Coast's oldest families. Jane- supremely intelligent, awkward, and deliciously funny- is the product of a disastrous union between a down-on-her-luck (but eternally optimistic) burleque queen and the dreary Cincinnati bank clerk she dupes into marriage.

But Almost Paradise is more than just the recounting of two lives. All of Susan Isaacs' characters are alive- colorful, human and beautifully textured: James, Nicholas' father, an embittered, hard-drinking, womanizing former OSS spy stuck in a Wall Street law firm; Dorothy, Jane's vicious, avaricious stepmother; Murray, their savvy, good-hearted agent; their daughters, the chilly Victoria, the vulnerable Elizabeth.

Almost Paradise is the Colbleighs' story, together and apart, from the cold-water flat in Hell's Kitchen to the rolling, verdant Connecticut farm to the Fifth Avenue duplex, from their vastly different backgrounds to their life together that transcends what either alone could achieve. It is a tale of great wealth and great celebrity in the midst of personal tragedy, of the ties that bind us all together, and the missed opportunities that tear us apart.

Susan Isaacs has written a profoundly moving drama with wit, warmth, irony, and compassion- a deep and gripping saga that penetrates to the heart of our modern culture.