The Love Child's Revenge

July 7, 2008
Revenge is the game plan for Peach Harrison, an ambitious and ruthless television journalist in Bailey-Williams's intense drama (after Floating
). Peach still remembers with bitterness her hardscrabble life as Claudia Fryar, love child of Louis Harrison, a wealthy African-American Philadelphian, and her mother, Georgia, a seamstress who worked in Louis's home. Louis, who loved Georgia but never divorced his horrid wife, Eliza, secretly took care of Claudia in his will, but Claudia doesn't find out about that until Eliza cheats her out of her inheritance. Vowing revenge, Peach becomes an expert at manipulation and, while in college, has an affair with the husband of Eliza's daughter. After graduation, Claudia becomes Peach Harrison and forges her own success story, her eye perpetually on getting back to Philly and getting some payback. She gets what she's after, but she also learns that vengeance exacts a high toll. Bailey-Williams writes with a chilling precision that's disturbingly eloquent, and readers will be entranced by Claudia-cum-Peach's shrewdness.

September 15, 2008
Claudia Fryar is well aware of the often-bridgeless chasm between social classes. Born on the wrong side of the tracks in Philadelphia, her mother works as a housekeeper for the wealthy Harrison family. Growing up, Claudia and her mother receive the brunt of verbal abuse from Mrs. Harrison and her shrewish daughters. Only after Louis, the patriarch, dies isit revealed Claudia is his illegitimate daughterand that the Harrison family has just bilked her out of the millions of dollars set aside for her in Louis will. Incensed and newly determined, Claudia begins a lifelong project of revenge. After leaving town and reinventing herself as Peach Harrison, a gorgeous and personable news anchor, she returns to Philadelphia to execute her plot against her half siblings and stepmother. Claudia steamrolls over anyone who steps in her path, realizing too late that her quest for payback may hurt more than just its intended targets. A modern-day morality play of the classic emotions of love, lust, hatred, and the need for retribution.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)