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In David Orsini's extraordinary novel The Price of Happiness, after a world-weary war hero falls in love with a younger woman, his wife draws that woman into a love affair with another man. What happens to these four people teaches them about the sometimes-bitter price of happiness.

In David Orsini's compelling novel Prisoners of Desire, four persons consent to a marriage experiment that involves an exchange of partners. For a while, this experiment brings new pleasures and longed-for exhilaration. Eventually, it anchors itself to sado-masochistic abuse as well as to sensual pleasure. It ignites the men's fury and imperils the women's safety.

From David Orsini, the highly praised author of SCHEMES, DISGUISES, & TRAPS; THE WOMAN WHO LOVED TOO WELL; THE GHOST LOVERS; and VANISHING BY DEGREES comes another compelling novel-THE WEAVER OF PLOTS.A woman shoots the lover who has betrayed her. A man rejects his infant son and lives to regret it. A woman's revenge, yoked as it is to her love/hate confusion, makes her its prisoner. These are some of the episodes that propel THE WEAVER OF PLOTS.THE WEAVER OF PLOTS is a fast-paced novel with suspense, thriller, literary, and romantic elements. Spanning twenty-five years (1950-1975), the novel traces the causes and the aftermath of a woman's retaliation against the lover who has spurned her. The story inhabits the world of the urbane, super rich: fashionable Manhattan restaurants, elegant New York City apartments, New England beachside compounds, ornate estates, and mountaintop hideaways. It is a luxurious and cinematic backdrop that is colored and stained by competitive gamesmanship, sexual transgressions, and destructive intrigues.The central character of the novel is Charlotte Scott, a privileged young woman who devises a plot to steal Noah Blake away from her best friend, Olivia Tanner. At first, it seems like a simple love triangle, but this complex narrative quickly draws the reader into multiple sub-plots that parallel and intersect the original triangle-including Charlotte's violent act of revenge against the lover who abandons her, as well as her unconventional relationship with two other men and her second act of revenge years later against Noah Blake.THE WEAVER OF PLOTS addresses the ongoing conversation involving a woman's right to defend herself against callous and abusive men by portraying these men in an unflattering light. At the same time, the novel portrays Charlotte as a complicated and ambivalent character. As self-aware as she is manipulative and devious, Charlotte eventually finds that her acts of revenge-pushed too far-are recoiling upon her.

In David Orsini's novella The Subtleties of Seduction, a boat race on Newport, Rhode Island waters during the summer of 1920 initiates a scenario of scandal, malice, and duplicity. Linda Maguire, a young woman who has always subdued her wilder impulses, becomes infatuated with Ryan Turner, a reckless nineteen-year-old youth. Linda's engagement to Steven Bradford, a war hero and a promising lawyer, complicates her feelings for the two men. One afternoon, because she wants to be in the company of both men at the same time, she urges her fiancé to accept Ryan's challenge to a sailboat race. But she is dismayed when Tracy, her younger sister, joins Ryan in the boat which he will be navigating. Instantly, she understands that Ryan and Tracy are lovers and that Ryan was merely playing a game with her when he roused her need for him. Ryan and Tracy have, in fact, devised the scenario of the boat race so that they can be alone together. What finally happens to Ryan and Tracy takes the rebellious couple as well as Linda by surprise.

In Bitterness / Seven Stories, David Orsini explores the lives of characters that are tested as well as transformed or defeated by the loss of a spouse or by the loss of children and other relatives during a world war. Some of the characters are tested by the aftermath of a fatal air crash, by terminal illness, and by unrequited love. The troubled human beings who activate their journeys within these pages include war-haunted veterans, a young protagonist who has inadvertently caused the death of his best friend, and a world-weary engineer who enters an unorthodox sexual triangle. These stories often portray characters who make unwise and sometimes perverse choices and who struggle to move forward to a new cycle.

In the autumn of 1944, Marc Roussillon, a heroic French pilot and Resistance agent, has recovered from the wounds that he sustained when a German officer, Gerhard Hauptmann, shot him. On assignment in Paris for MI5, the British Secret Intelligence Service, he becomes entangled in several violent episodes as he searches for the double agent within the Resistance who has been the catalyst in the deaths of thousands of Allied soldiers and pilots. Gradually, Marc becomes convinced that Hans Mueller is the double agent. Hans is a former Nazi pilot who, having left Germany, has joined the RAF and MI5. At first, Marc plans to urge Hans's girlfriend, Valerie Moreau, to help him expose Hans as the spy and to kill him. Though he has never met Valerie, he is aware that she is a Resistance agent who has fought bravely for the Allies. He wonders whether her love for Hans has blinded her to Hans's treachery. In his first meeting with her, Marc discovers that Valrie Moreau is actually his estranged wife, Simone. A year earlier, Marc destroyed his marriage to Simone when he forced her to kill Gerhard Hauptmann, the German officer with whom she had fallen in love after he helped her rescue a French pilot from the Nazis. Still working for the Resistance, Simone has disguised herself as the daughter of a Nazi sympathizer whom Resistance agents have assassinated. Determined to separate herself from her father's infamy, the real Valrie had been working courageously as a Resistance agent until she was killed during a bombing of Paris. MI5 then assigned Simone to impersonate Valrie and to discover the identity of the double agent. In her relationship with Hans, she has become Valrie's ghost made visible. Marc's first meeting with Simone does not go well. She refuses to enter his scheme to trap Hans Mueller. Even after Marc and other Resistance people apprehend and kill the double agent and his cohorts, Marc insists that Hans Mueller is also guilty. But Simone believes in Hans's innocence. She also suspects Marc of wanting to find a reason to kill Hans because she loves the German who has joined the Allies. He accuses her of falling in love not with Hans, but with Hans as Gerhard's ghost. In England, Marc tries to draw his parents into his plot to trap Hans Mueller. He is surprised when they tell him that Hans may be innocent. Brave Resistance fighters, his parents caution him to search his real motive for wanting to prove that Hans is a double agent. Like Simone, they believe that Marc wants to kill Hans because he is a rival for Simone's love. They convince Marc to join them at their Derbyshire home for a week. Simone and Hans will be there. At that time, Marc and they can further test Hans's loyalty. During the brief holiday from the war, Marc meets Deirdre Sullivan, a lovely Irish girl who has left her home in Galway to become a nurse in war-torn England. Though they are attracted to each other, their trouble-haunted pasts prevent them from rescuing one another. Deirdre cannot let go of the ghost of her husband, who has been killed in the war. Marc refuses to let go of his obsession for Simone and of his memory of their lost happiness, which hoversghostly and insistentabout him. Becoming acquainted with Hans, he learns of the tragedies that the German has endured, and he accords him a grudging respect. But he is determined to win back Simone's love. He is also determined to kill Hans Mueller. In a series of tense and sometimes violent episodes that occur in a Lincolnshire pub, in a Derbyshire forest, and in a park within the Monceau district of Paris, Marc, Simone, and Hans play out the bitter resolution of their triangle.