By Frances Kiernan
307 pages; Norton

The woman in the lush green Balmain gown on the cover of Frances Kiernan's The Last Mrs. Astor (Norton) has been a world-class socialite, a hands-on philanthropist, and recently the focus of a legal battle that was the stuff of tabloid heaven. At 105, Brooke Astor, who had a talent for connecting with people great and small and a sporting attitude toward her often unpleasant millionaire husband, Vincent Astor, can no longer tell her own story, as she did in two beguiling memoirs. Kiernan's sharp-eyed biography brings back a woman who, far into her 90s, relished the dance of life—always in high heels.

— Cathleen Medwick