Violet Armengard never thinks of her extraordinary beauty as anything other than a nuisance. That is, until she ends up broke and alone in Paris. Through a series of chance encounters in hotel lobbies, Violet finds herself an object of interest to men rich enough to know the price of everything, including the privilege of bedding supremely beautiful women. As her addiction to grand hotels and haute couture takes hold, she convinces herself that she is only doing what women have done for millennia - trading sex for life's little luxuries. But then she meets Florin, a man with an unknowable past, who leads her further into a world where human feeling is a negotiable commodity and sex is as much about power as it is pleasure. Brilliantly observed and darkly erotic, The Woman in the Lobby is a provocative and compulsively readable novel about the intriguing possibilities of separating sex and love.
