The Spare Wife - Alex Witchel

Ponce Morris is a beautiful, rich widow who?s known as ?the spare wife? because she?s the perfect companion to the wealthy, powerful, New York couples in her elite social circle. She throws elegant dinner parties, goes to sports events with the husbands, and shops with the wives. She?s both flawlessly appropriate and coolly nonthreatening?everyone knows Ponce doesn?t have a romantic bone in her body. Over the years, she has managed other people?s lives?and her own?perfectly. Then Babette Seele, an ambitious, aspiring journalist, discovers that Ponce is having an affair with a socially prominent, very married man, and decides to break the scandal, turning Ponce?s carefully calibrated world upside down. Witchel?s sophisticated, witty, sexy satire provides a fascinating glimpse into the lives and loves of upper-class New Yorkers, sharply exposing the foibles of the fabulous.