NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Four American debutantes attend a renowned Paris cotillion in Danielle Steel’s captivating new novel. It’s the summer of 1959 and the Palace of Versailles is hosting an event that will make history. It is an exclusive dusk-to-dawn ball in which a select group of American and French debutantes will be presented to international society and royalty. Four young women, all with something to prove, receive what some see as the invitation of a lifetime. Amelia Alexander, who hopes to eventually attend law school, hesitates to participate in what she sees as an archaic and privileged tradition. But her indomitable widowed mother, Jane, who’s struggled financially and sacrificed for a career, encourages her to attend. Jane would do anything for Amelia to have the chance at a happily ever after. Felicity Smith is equally uncertain about the ball. Although her family is prominent in the Dallas social scene, Felicity prefers to keep to herself, avoiding the older sister who torments her. But to get out of her sister’s shadow, Felicity decides to accept. If it’s a success, the tables will have turned at last. For Caroline Taylor, the beautiful ingénue and daughter of Hollywood legends, the ball is an irresistible opportunity. But an unexpected heartbreak just before she leaves for France gets things off to a bad start. Then there’s Samantha Walker, an art history major with an overprotective father. Her excitement about the invitation is overshadowed by the emotional and physical effects of a past tragedy that still haunts her.  For all these young women, Paris and one transcendent night will change their lives forever. Bestselling author Danielle Steel extends an invitation to all, in The Ball at Versailles . Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world’s bestselling authors, with a billion copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include  Happiness, Palazzo, The Wedding Planner, Worthy Opponents, Without a Trace, The Whittiers, The High Notes, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of  His Bright Light , the story of her son Nick Traina’s life and death;  A Gift of Hope , a memoir of her work with the homeless;  Expect a Miracle , a book of her favorite quotations for inspiration and comfort;  Pure Joy , about the dogs she and her family have loved; and the children’s books  Pretty Minnie in Paris  and  Pretty Minnie in Hollywood. Chapter 1 Jane Fairbanks Alexander saw the creamy white envelope sitting on the silver tray on the table in the entrance hall, where the part-time housekeeper who came three times a week had put it. Gloria was Irish and had worked for them daily when Jane’s daughter Amelia was still in school, but now that she was in college, Jane didn’t need Gloria as often and she had another part-time job the other two days of the week. She bought the groceries she knew Jane liked, did the laundry, and cleaned the apartment. Amelia only came home now for the occasional weekend. It was her freshman year at Barnard. The apartment seemed strangely quiet without her. It was small, neat, and elegant, and had two bedrooms, in a prewar building in Manhattan on Fifth Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street, with a doorman, which made Jane feel safe. On the days that Gloria was there, it was nice for Jane to come home to a clean, tidy apartment, with her laundry neatly folded on her bed. Having an orderly home was some slight compensation for the fact that Amelia wasn’t there anymore. She was uptown in the dorm. Barnard was the female sister school of Columbia University. Amelia was loving her freshman year. She was an English literature major, which made sense since Jane was the second-in-command of a venerable publishing house in the city. Amelia’s father had been in publishing too, and Amelia had clear goals. She wanted to go to law school when she graduated from Barnard, and hoped to get into Columbia, which had been one of the first law schools to accept women. For the past nine years, Jane had brought Amelia up on her own. She had been nine years old when her father, Alfred, died. She had never known him as her mother had. Jane had warm memories of him before the war, when he was still a whole person, before he had gone to war and everything had changed. Jane had met him when she was a junior at Vassar. He had been getting a masters in English at Yale. Once they met at a deb ball in New York, he had courted her for a year and a half and traveled from New Haven to visit her in Poughkeepsie as often as he was able. They got engaged during her senior year, and married as soon as she graduated, in 1939. Alfred was twenty-four then, and Jane was twenty-two. He had an entry-level job in publishing at G. P. Putnam’s, and he had a bright future ahead of him. He had started as an editorial assistant and was rapidly promoted to junior editor. He loved his job and looked forward to being a senior editor or even editor in chief one day. J