http://www.solspeak.com/sol_products.php
Yea, what he said. If you're willing to move towards the upper end of your speaker budget, I'd really recommend my set up: Soliloquy Sat 5 bookshelf speakers + a pinnacle baby boomer sub. This is a very nice sounding combo and comes in a very small, wife friendly format.
The Sat 5's are Soliliquy's smallest offering. They use the same drivers as the 5.0's and 5.3's, but come in a small, sealed enclosure. The sealed enclosure allows them to be placed on bookshelves or right up next to the wall and they still sound good (don't do this with rear ported speakers). They have the really sweet sound of soliloquys, but will need a subwoofer.
I'd recommend the Pinnacle babyboomer (or perhaps the smaller subsonic). The babyboomer uses 2 8" woofer arranged in a bipolar configuration--make it very fast, and hence very musical. Great for 2-channel music, and it is a tiny 10"x10"x10" cube. Very easy to hide under an end table and get it out of sight (ie, very wife friendly). You might also look into the subsonic that is built on the same bi-polar design with 6.5" drivers--only 8x8x8 (and comes in white).
I just recently came across a place that sold the babyboomer for $500, but I can't find it now. On a quick search, the best I found was this:
http://www.legacyaudiovideo.com/pinnaclesub.html$500 for the subsonic, $700 for the babyboomer. You might also look into the Sunfire true sub jr, same design idea but a bit more expensive.
Underwood Hifi (find them on audiogon.com) used to sell the Sat 5's for $425 a pair, which was a steal. Everywhere else seems to have them for $650.
So for just under $1200 you could get the Sat 5s and subsonic easily, or if you hunt around, you might be able to get the sat 5's + the babyboomer for about $1000. Really, this is a very nice sounding package, and if you're in the same boat as me, very wife-friendly.