Felicia's Favorites

by Danielle Steel

Genres: General Fiction; Family Life; Women's Fiction; Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

A mother bestows a life-changing legacy on her five adult daughters in this profoundly moving novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel.

After the unexpected death of their mother, Felicia Morgan Weston, her five daughters are summoned to a historic Connecticut farmhouse for the reading of her will. Still reeling from shock, they hear revelations that will potentially change their lives—and they realize there was much more to their mother than they ever knew.

Charlotte, the oldest, always resented her mother’s advice, but now misses her terribly. An entrepreneur and single mother, she doesn’t dare hope for a second chance at love.

Although content with her career as a TV producer and her life with her partner in Greenwich Village, Quinne is about to have an opportunity to dream bigger.

Former ballet dancer Olivia has lived as a paraplegic since a car accident twelve years ago. Refusing to be a burden, she has denied herself the love of her life.

Despite her mother’s disapproval, Veronica resigned herself to a secret relationship with an ambitious married senator.

Happily married mother of three Isabelle has just found out that her husband is having an affair with his much younger intern.

Each sister is about to receive a gift beyond her wildest dreams from their very private but loving mother, who considered all her girls her favorites. Danielle Steel’s new novel is a moving testament to the power of a mother’s love and the importance of fully embracing life.

Release date: March 3, 2026

Publisher: Dell

Print pages: 272

Sample

Chapter 1

The identical letter reached each of the five recipients on the same day, according to Felicia Morgan Weston’s precise instructions. The day the letters were sent was the second of December, a month after her death. It was sent to her five daughters by her attorney, Scott Freeman, and said only that he had a letter written to them by their mother, she had written it six years before, at the same time she wrote her will, when she turned sixty. Scott wanted them to come to his office, so he could give them each their copy. He knew it contained some long-overdue explanations, which their mother was aware would shock them, or surprise them at best.

Felicia had been strong, busy, still beautiful, and in good health when she wrote the letter and her will, and nothing had changed when she died in a freak accident at sixty-six, a month before.

She had run in the New York marathon for twenty years. She did it every year to prove to herself that she could, and she prepared for it all year. It cleared her head, and gave her a feeling of accomplishment.

She was one of the victims of a deranged sniper who had opened fire on the runners with an assault rifle shortly after they crossed the starting line. She was the first of the nine people he killed. He injured eight more before the police shot and killed him.

Her daughters were devastated. They were all close to her, and their mother was the only family they had. Their father had died in a commercial airline crash when they were between two and ten years old. The three oldest girls, Charlotte, Quinne, and Olivia, still had a few vague memories of their father, but the two youngest, Veronica and Isabelle, had been too young to remember him. Felicia was thirty-four when she was widowed, her husband Bill Weston forty-four when he died. The plane crash was officially determined to be due to pilot error. As a result, the insurance payments to the families the passengers had left behind were enormous. They paid Felicia enough to assure her and her five daughters a reasonably comfortable life for twenty years, until her youngest daughter finished college. Felicia had never remarried and had been widowed for thirty-two years when she died.

Bill had worked as a literary agent at a major literary agency, and had a solid career. Felicia had worked as a junior editor in a publishing house before they married and had children. They had met at a party at the Frankfurt book fair, when a more senior editor got sick and dropped out. Felicia and Bill were both from New York and books were their passion. They dated for a year. She got pregnant almost immediately after their wedding and quit working when her first child Charlotte was born, and she stayed home after that. Bill was able to support them without her working.

His parents had been college professors and died before he did. He had inherited a small amount from them and sold their house on Long Island. The money they left was Bill and Felicia’s buffer for emergencies, and helped make it possible for Felicia to stay home with their children. The insurance money from the airline made it possible for her not to change their lifestyle after Bill’s death, but she was an intelligent woman, and looking into the future, insisted she she knew that the insurance wouldn’t last forever. She began thinking about getting a job a few years after Bill died. She went back to editing at a publishing house, which was the only profession she knew. Bill had often consulted her about his new literary clients, and he often shared manuscripts with her. He respected her opinions. She was a voracious reader, and had a good sense for finding people with undeveloped talent. He had often encouraged her to write herself but she brushed off the suggestion as absurd. She didn’t have the desire or the talent. Bill didn’t press her but he was certain she had a book in her. Felicia’s father was a literature professor, like Bill’s father, and her mother was a Latin teacher at an elite girls’ school. They prized education, and had left Felicia their savings, to help send her daughters to college. They died a year apart, not long after Bill. Felicia raised the girls alone, and tried to share her love of books with them, which appealed to some of them more than others. Her daughters had diverse talents and interests and were entirely different from each other.

She went back to work when she was thirty-seven, three years after Bill died, when her youngest, Isabelle, entered kindergarten. She worked part-time for the first year, and moved to full-time when Isabelle started first grade. She enrolled all of them in after-school daycare, where the older ones could do homework before she picked them all up on the way home. She had a housekeeper who babysat for the girls when Felicia needed her to.

When she went back to work, she was disappointed by the caliber of the books she was editing. Many of them were intellectually ambitious and boring to read. The more commercial books always seemed to have a flaw in them, or something lacking, an absence of passion or credible characters. They weren’t exciting and didn’t strike her as great reads. In frustration one night, she began working on an outline for a book of her own. She didn’t know if she’d finish it, or even start it, she wrote the outline as an experiment, to see if she could write a book, more for fun than with any serious intent. She was stunned to find that the story raced along once she started to write, and it fairly flew beneath her fingers. She loved writing the book and finished in three months. It was a complicated thriller that challenged the reader, took constant unexpected turns, and kept the reader guessing until the end. She fell in love with the characters as she wrote, edited it carefully afterwards, and wasn’t sure what to do next. Not knowing where else to go, she submitted it under a pseudonym to the publishing house where she worked. They normally didn’t accept manuscripts that weren’t sent by a literary agent, but she argued persistently for the book, and when she convinced her boss to read it, her senior editor agreed, liked it, and was eager to publish it. It was published on Felicia’s thirty-ninth birthday, under the name Morgan Reed, and it quickly became that rarest of birds in the publishing business, an overnight success. Readers and critics alike were fascinated by the plot, were enchanted by the endless twists, fell in love with the characters, and loved the ending, which surprised them completely. She had invented a complicated but convincing identity for the mysterious author, supposedly a recluse in the wilds of Montana. She took her late husband’s boss, famous agent Robert Farr, into her confidence. He agreed to be her agent, and promised to shield her identity. Readers weren’t even sure of the sex of the author with the name she had chosen, Morgan Reed, her own maiden name and an entirely fictional last name. Robert Farr never gave away her secret and her true identity remained unknown. He was vastly impressed by her talent, and he was one of the most respected agents in New York. She was a number one best-selling author at forty.

In time, she discovered that she could write three or four novels a year, and her fans devoured them. She grazed the top of the bestseller lists with every book. Felicia was highly praised at the publishing house for having spotted the manuscript and the unknown author’s talent, and after her third big success with a bestseller, she left the publishing house, saying that she had been hired by the now very successful author, to be her private editor and work directly for her, editing manuscripts sent from Montana. Every editor in the house envied her, and she stuck to the same story with her children. They never knew that she was Morgan Reed. She wrote the books by day when they were in school and at night while they slept, and the sight of manuscripts on her desk seemed familiar and normal to them since she was a private editor for the woman she had created and called Morgan Reed.

Felicia knew from Bill’s career as an agent, and after working in publishing herself, she saw what happened to people’s lives when fame intervened. She wanted none of that to interfere with raising her children, their values, or the way they lived. They lived in a respectable but not luxurious building in the East Nineties, near her children’s schools. She was able to keep them all in private schools, thanks to the airline insurance, the small inheritance from her parents, and eventually the impressive contracts her agent got her. Her book contracts provided a comfortable lifestyle and a firm foundation for their future. It was always a condition that the reclusive author would do no publicity for the books, would never appear in person or do book tours or appearances, but the books kept coming steadily and continued to improve. By the time Felicia died, she had been a dazzling success for twenty-seven years and no one had ever seen or spoken to Morgan Reed. And she had written a hundred and eight books.

Her agent, Robert Farr, shielded her from all direct contact. Several times over the years, he had tried to encourage Felicia to step into the limelight, but she saw no reason to. She was comfortable as she was. When the children grew up and moved out after college, she took a smaller apartment in a slightly better neighborhood in the East Eighties, looking out at the East River, and said she was happy there.