Newly widowed Pauline Cook was once the toast of the Windy City elite--but now she's practically broke. At least she's in better shape than her dear departed friend Ethan Campbell, whose corpse Pauline has had the misfortune to discover. A writer who chronicled the lives, loves, and ensembles of the Gold Coast's most elegant ladies, Ethan apparently took his own life--while inelegantly clad in old boxers, no less. And since no relatives are coming forward to claim Ethan's remains, it falls to Pauline to settle his final affairs . . . with her own dwindling funds.

However, there are...

The return of blue-blooded fashionista Pauline Cook, whose search for a missing friend leads her from an iconoclastic book group to the deepest and most unfashionable reaches of the Far East.

Back in Chicago after a disastrous European love affair, socialite Pauline Cook finds her finances nearly depleted, her co-op a shambles, and her best friend mysteriously missing--vanished along with Pauline's cat. Though Whitney Armstrong's husband offers a substantial reward for the return of his lost wife, Pauline can't help suspecting that his grief is merely an act. But it's a shocking...