'A Cup of Tea'

Amy Ephron

It's New York, 1917, and on a dark rainy night, "A young woman stood under a street lamp." She's observed there by Rosemary Fells, a woman with great wealth and too much time on her hands, who takes pity on the creature and brings her in for a cup of hot tea. There, the street urchin, if that';s what she is, exchanges a furtive look with Rosemary’s handsome fiancé It's the old no good deed goes unpunished." The novel received a Booklist Best Fiction of the Year award in 2005.