Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the many friends, family, and acquaintances whose shared experiences over the past eight years have given me fodder for this book.

I am grateful too for the invaluable copytasting efforts of Miranda Murphy and Alister McMillan. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Melinda Welton-Howard for her snappy title suggestion; to Penny Green for her sage words of advice; to the holy trinity of book cover collaborators—Carla Coulson, Arno Ferrié, and the Lido de Paris; to Nik Quaife, for providing me with a quiet corner of southwestern France in which to get the book ball rolling; and of course to my unflappable, ever-pleasant editors, Ann Campbell and Laura Lee Mattingly, and my trusty agent, Faye Bender.

Thanks also to my long-suffering family for taking it all in the spirit in which it is intended, and to my beloved, Shay, who is a daily source of inspiration.

And finally un grand merci to Paris, the old seductress with the timeless charm.