A woman checks into a hotel room and entertains a man who is not her husband. A shooter blows away the lover and wounds the millionairess, leaving her for dead.

"A profound and gripping memoir by Nicole Walters, the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who became a self-made multi-millionaire by showing others how to recognize their own strengths-and her own harrowing journey to the discovery that she was worthy all along of the life of her dreams"-- As the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, Walters was raised by parents who emphasized education and hustle but themselves lived a life of lack. In response, she developed...

Madam C. J. Walker is reputed to be America's first self-made woman millionaire. Born to former slaves in the Louisiana Delta in the aftermath of the Civil War, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty, Walker spent the first decades of her life as a laundress. By the time of her death in 1919, however, Walker had refashioned herself into one of the most famous African American figures in the nation: the owner and president of a hair-care empire...

The merchant of Venice: Shakespeare's comedy in which a young merchant attempts to extricate himself from an onerous contract with a vicious shylock. The millionairess: Shaw's comedy in which a wealthy, heiress seeks romance with an Egyptian doctor who only tends to the poor. Bed among the lentils: A dramatic monologue by a jaded, alcoholic wife of a country vicar. Suddenly last summer: A wealthy Southern matriarch tries to influence a young neurosurgeon...