Lillian, plump younger wife of billionaire James «Jimmie» Manville, has always felt isolated in her husband's world, but when he suddenly dies in a plane crash, she is devastated. Then she learns that he left his fortune to his conniving brother and sister. Bereft of any useful skills and with nothing but a broken-down farmhouse in rural Calburn, Virginia, and the animosity of the press, Lillian moves to the farm, changes her name to Bailey James, and loses weight and has a nose job so no one will recognize her as the infamous widow. Jimmie's last request was that she seek the truth about the «Golden Six,» a group of six young men who were considered heroes until tragedy struck all of them and their families in 1968. Through her investigations she uncovers the facts, but more importantly she finds friends and herself. There are gaps in this promising tale, but the droves of avid Deveraux fans won't mind one bit. Patty Engelmann.

Billionaire leaves his widow nothing but a ramshackle farmhouse. Mousy Lillian doesn't complain. She'd always been content to hide in the corners of rich Jimmie Manville's life, anyway. He doted on his plump little wife, though plenty of people wondered why he didn't get a woman who wasn't afraid of her own shadow. Surely he had a reason for leaving his fortune to the sister and brother he hated, or perhaps he was planning to change his will before he died in a plane crash. In any case, Lillian believes that challenging the will is fruitless: she lied about her age when she signed her marriage certificate, so the marriage wasn't even legal. On the advice of Jimmie's lawyer, she takes a new identity as Bailey James, gets a nose job, then slinks off to the farmhouse in rural Virginia. Her consuming grief has made her lose weight, so now she's actually beautiful, just like that. She renovates the place and swaps life stories with hunky carpenter Matt Longacre. As Bailey gossips with nosy neighbors Patsy and Janice (the trio has started a jam-making business), she hears the story of six local boys who, years ago, saved a rural high school from being blown up by a bomb. Acclaimed as heroes, they went their separate ways . . . some now dead, some still living. The six had some connection to Bailey's dear departed husband--but what? When she finally figures it out and realizes that the harelipped teenager in an old photo is Jimmie, and that Jimmie had changed his name, the mystery is solved. The nasty sister and brother who've laid claim to Jimmie's billions may not be his relations at all. Bailey puts down her jam spoon and goes after what's rightfully hers. Hard-core fans might make it through these thickets of haphazard plot. But sloppy prose and unappealing characters mark a low for the perhaps too-prolific Deveraux, author of "twenty-seven New York Times bestsellers" (The Summerhouse, 2001, etc.). Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Perennially bestselling romance writer Deveraux's newest (put out by Atria, S&S's new hardcover imprint) tells the story of a 33-year-old woman's successful remaking of her life and self-image after the sudden death of her beloved husband, Jimmie, who was a combination of business tycoon and Mafia honcho. Pampered Lillian Manville is bustled away in the middle of the night and informed that she was cut almost entirely from Jimmie's will. Rather than a portion of his billions, he bequeathed her an old farmhouse in Virginia and a cryptic note referring to "the truth about what happened." Retreating to lick her wounds, Lillian begins to carve out a new life for herself and investigate the mystery of Jimmy's past. As she uncovers the town's buried secrets, she also discovers that Jimmy deliberately created a role for her as his mousy wife and kept her trapped there. As she breaks out of her shell, she loses weight, restyles herself and starts a cooking business with the townswomen, who grudgingly begin to accept her presence. Bailey (as Lillian renames herself) is infectiously enthusiastic yet just insecure enough to make her pathbreaking corporate organization of her neighbors and her concerns about her involvement with Matt, the inevitable eligible bachelor, ring true. There is nothing particularly surprising in this novel, but Deveraux's touch is gold, and her protagonist combines innocent appeal with wry experience in a way that readers will surely find irresistible. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved