The prolific G. B. Stern charmed audiences in America and Great Britain with her energy, her subtle wit, and her ability to create fascinating fictional families. In her long and varied career as a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter she was known at various times as an authority on French wines (Bouquet, 1927), Jane Austen, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Her creation of the Matriarch series of novels, which documents five generations of the engaging Rakonitz clan, however, secured her popularity. Stern's critics argued that her skills at characterization, which combined humor with serious drama, could become formulaic, or as The Times (London) noted in her obituary, "too studiously light and amusing." Yet her admirers were drawn by those same qualities. A New York Herald Tribune review of 13 October 1957 by Caroline Turnstall looks back over Stern's career to reflect that "Fashions change; the Atomic Age comes into its own; but G...