Amanda Cross: The Players Come Again (UK 2018)

From the Publisher:
Amanda Cross examines relationships and human nature in The Players Come Again, a thought-provoking novel about literature, feminism and ageing.

The 80s are coming to a close and Kate Fansler is using this time to tie up loose ends. Having completed a work of literary criticism - and vowing it will be her last - Kate enjoys lunch with editor Simon Pearlstine, indulging in her usual vodka martini.

There is no rest for the wicked as he commissions her to write a biography of reclusive Gabrielle Foxx, the quiet wife of a famous modernist author. Kate discovers there is more to Gabrielle than meets the eye, and in order to trace the Foxx family's complicated history she must track down three important women from Gabrielle's past: Anne, Dorinda and Nellie.

But the further Kate probes into Gabrielle's history the darker the secrets she uncovers...

'I salute this latest work as being among the best she has written, if not the best' -- Antonia Fraser

Amanda Cross: The Players Come Again. Bello / Pan Macmillan, ISBN: 9781509820207 (March, 2018), 374 p., £10.99, eBook £3.99.

Amanda Cross: The Players Come Again (USA 1991)

From the Publisher:
"Those who relish intricate mind games, complex characters, scalpel-sharp wit and literary allusions by the peck will clasp [THE PLAYERS COME AGAIN] to their hearts." -- The San Diego Union
"No one has a sharper eye than Amanda Cross." -- The Washington Post Book World

A scarcely believable rumor climbing the literary grapevine hints that Emmanuel Foxx's great modernist novel, Ariadne, whose theme is a woman's emotional life. may actually have been written by his wife, Gabrielle. When a New York publishing house invites Kate Fansler to write a biography of the obscure and enigmatic Gabrielle, she instantly accepts. Her research quickly zeroes in on three charming older women -all connected with the Foxx family since childhood -- who know more than they are willing to tell Kate about the true relationship between Emmanuel and Gabrielle Foxx. Much more. Behind their fierce secrecy, Kate discerns a fantastic pattern of events, a shocking secret that fifty years have done nothing to defuse, and a strange truth that she can never reveal.

"Compelling... Cross remains queen of the American literary whodunit." -- Publishers Weekly

Amanda Cross: The Players Come Again. Kate Fansler investigates the literary mystery of the century. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 034536998X (November, 1991), 229 p., $5.99.

Amanda Cross: The Players Come Again (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
At the opening of what will prove to be Kate Fansler's most ambitious "case," the redoubtable academic and amateur detective finds herself at loose ends. Her study of Henry James and Thomas Hardy has been published to great acclaim, and she wonders if another project will ever move her to write again. Into this "desert of intention" comes an editor from a New York publishing company who persuades Kate to take on the biography of Gabrielle Foxx.

Wife of the modernist author Emmanuel Foxx, the reclusive Gabrielle has been an enigma to academics, who have long wondered about her true influence on her husband's controversial masterpiece, Ariadne. Fundamental questions about the nature of Gabrielle's marriage to Emmanuel -- and rumors of her own secret work -- still tantalize. Was she really the handmaiden to Foxx's talent, or was she the creative pulse that enabled him to write?

As Kate begins her literary detective work, one fact becomes clear: Three women, friends since childhood, hold the key to the real story behind the elusive Gabrielle: Anne Gringold, the "perfect child of an upper servant," whose observant eye drank in the glorious wealth of the Goddard family, for which her mother worked; Dorinda Goddard, the flamboyant and adored daughter of the "very rich," who becomes lost in a conventional marriage only to find herself in a most unconventional way forty years later; Nellie Foxx, Dorinda's cousin, who paid perhaps the biggest price in her quest for emotional freedom.

Digging deeper and deeper into the background of the Foxx family, Kate soon comes to understand the motivation behind the fierce secrecy of these "three good witches," but she must nonetheless confront them with some very real evidence pointing to a secret far more complicated than even she had been led to expect.

A poignant journal, a hidden manuscript, and three spunky women who must finally come to terms with their pasts are among the elements that make The Players Come Again the most intriguing Amanda Cross mystery yet.

Amanda Cross: The Players Come Again. A Kate Fansler Mystery. Random House, ISBN: 0394587855 (October, 1990), 229 p., $17.95.