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. (Oct.)
