Something in Disguise — Elizabeth Jane Howard

An unforgettable novel about love, family, life, and death in 1960s England
 
Col. Herbert Brown-Lacy's daughter, Alice, is getting married -- more to escape her father than anything else. Though in truth Alice's stepmother May has been nicer than her previous stepmother -- and even her own mother. But May's grown children, Oliver and Elizabeth, are certain their mother made a terrible mistake in her marriage to the dull-as-dishwater Herbert. May clearly didn't marry him for his money or intellectual prowess -- and at her age sex appeal was out of the question -- so why did she marry him? That's something May, whose first marriage ended in tragedy when her husband, Clifford, was killed during the war, is starting to wonder herself. Maybe she's a woman who needs to be married.
 
With Oliver and Elizabeth in London discovering life on their own terms, Alice is also questioning her impulsive marriage to Leslie Mount. As crisis draws the disparate members of this patchwork family together -- and apart -- from the English countryside to the Cote d'Azur to Jamaica, a shocking occurrence will shatter lives.
 
From the bestselling author of the Cazalet Chronicles, Something in Disguise is a story about familial love, married love, love at first sight, and love that isn't love at all.