Fatal Romance:  A True Story of Obsession and Murder (St. Martin's True Crime Library)
Popular romance writer Nancy Richards-Akers spun tales of  happily-ever-after, but the rosy glow of her books contrasted  with her own life; in 1999, she was murdered by her husband.  Drawing on interviews with the couple's acquaintances, Pulitzer  (A Woman Scorned) spins a sensational true-crime narrative  detailing the relationship between Nancy and Jeremy Akers, her  husband of nearly 20 years. Nancy met Jeremy while working in  D.C. as a speechwriter in the '70s. It didn't take long for  Nancy to fall in love with the short, well-muscled and highly  decorated former Marine, and she married him secretly, against  her parents' wishes. According to Pulitzer, the first five years  of Nancy's marriage were "idyllic." Over the next 15 years,  however, she began to see behind Jeremy's Southern charm he  expected her to pay the lion's share of household expenses and  refused to let her work outside the home. Nancy eventually left  Jeremy to move in with a young trucker, and although she knew  that Jeremy had violent tendencies, she never realized to what  extent until he turned a gun on her and then himself, leaving  their three children orphans. At times, Pulitzer's writing is  redundant and the chronology of events puzzling, but this is an  absorbing account of a romance that was anything but storybook.  (July)Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.