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Pages: 371
Members are fond of saying that nothing ever changes at Belle Vista Country Club, where for nearly a century, the socially prominent and politically connected have played tennis and golf together, met and married each other, and kept aloof from the general public, all while consuming copious amounts of alcohol.
But with one swipe of a wrecking ball, down tumbles the club’s hand-carved stone sign, and with it, life as Belle Vista has known it comes to a shattering end.
Scandal arrives in the form of ex- stripper Shana Lee Jones and her television crew, who turn the century-old haven for the rich and powerful into the stage for Queen of the Court, a reality show that, in the hands of failed producer Rex Range, promises to be anything but tasteful. The Belle Vista board has sold a majority interest in the nearly bankrupt club to Shana’s husband, strip club owner and reformed outlaw biker Wayne Jones, to the distress of the elite membership, especially socialite Allie Beech and her domineering mother, Lavinia Winter.
Shana, a West Virginia dropout with a big heart hiding under her substantial chest, believes that she’s bought social respectability, along with a spot on Allie’s prestigious Belle Vista Ladies’ Tennis Team. She hopes that along with prestige and fame, belonging to Belle Vista will provide her with a circle of friends that will help fill the empty space she carries within her, and make her forget the secret she’s hidden from everyone, even her husband.
Little does Shana realize that, under their designer clothes and Botoxed facades, the Bitches of Belle Vista are hiding their own secrets; drinking, drugs, affairs, bankruptcy – maybe even murder.
Beautiful Taylor Thomas has a dysfunctional marriage and a bad habit of combining pills, liquor and triple-shot lattes before tennis matches. Divorcee Caroline Walinsky engages in random binges of eating, shopping (and shoplifting) while her mortgage goes unpaid. The second Mrs. Walinsky, former Russian junior champion Elena Dragunova, looks like a centerfold, plays like a Williams sister and dispatches her enemies on and off the court like Vladimir Putin. Karen Baker, a type-A Catholic school girl taking a ‘break’ from her high-pressure career to start a family, discovers that country club life offers sinful temptations she may not be able to resist.
Allie, determined to remain queen of this unlikely group, will stop at nothing to see her upstart rival Shana disgraced and driven from Belle Vista. But when she begins to delve into the disappearance of eccentric heiress Pippa Edgemoor in pursuit of her fortune, she unearths a secret that could destroy Belle Vista and her own family.
From the elite country club suburbs of the nation’s capital to the ramshackle trailer parks of West Virginia to the quirky environs of Brooklyn Heights, Queen of the Court combines the unlikely elements of reality television, murder, mayhem and country club tennis in a hilarious saga of social satire that will keep you entertained from beginning to end.
