The First Wives Club

Marriage has turned into a crash dive for Brenda Morelli Cushman, Elise Elliot Atchison and Annie MacDuggan Paradise. These three well-heeled Manhattan women were chums during their college days, but they all took different paths. Brenda married an electronics-emporium magnate, Elise became a film star, Annie an Upper East Side housewife. They all helped their husbands build up hugely successful businesses. Now they’re reunited by catastrophe: each has just been callously dumped by her husband for a younger, sexier “trophy wife.” There are sharks swimming around Manhattan, and most of them are pumped with silicone and squeezed into Spandex.