Envy

Envy is a historical novel by the American writer Anna Godbersen, published in 2009. It is the third book of the Luxe series, which follows several wealthy families in New York at the end of the nineteenth century. It keeps to the same city and the same circle of families as the books before it.

The Holland family is at the centre of it. Elizabeth has come back after a dramatic absence, and when she declines to stand at her sister's side again, the people watching the family begin to suspect that all is not well behind the doors of their house on Gramercy Park. Henry and Penelope Schoonmaker, meanwhile, are the city's most talked about couple.

Their marriage is not a happy one, for all the size of the ring. Penelope's friend Carolina Broad is described in the newspapers as an heiress, and her fortune and her reputation are both less secure than the papers suggest, especially with somebody in society telling tales to the press. From the outside, the families appear to have everything anyone could want in the way of money, beauty and happiness.